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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1891 | 12 |
| 1892 | 8 |
20 stories matching instead
- The Jail Was Out of Level
Fred Neuffer was due in court for embezzlement. Instead, Olympia’s county jail became the scene of a strange one-man investigation into whether the floor itself was crooked.
- Olympia’s Fight for a Deep-Water Harbor
Citizens tell the harbor-line commissioners to claim Budd Inlet’s tide flats for public wharves—not a narrow waterway that would hand the waterfront to private owners.
- The Boy Too Tough for the Reform School
A teenage burglar escapes Chehalis, stumps the trustees, and triggers a constitutional standoff over who must deal with an incorrigible child.
- Gate City’s Bridge to Nowhere—and the Heavyweight Who Saw a Future
A missing approach leaves a new Black River bridge unusable, diverting trade to Centralia—but John L. Sullivan thinks the town could host his next fight.
- The Schoolbook Bribery Scandal
The State Supreme Court reinstates an indictment against four men accused of attempting to bribe a member of the State Board of Education to influence textbook contracts.
- Main Street Refuses to Be Paved
Property owners between Fifth and Sixth beat back a macadam upgrade, a councilman berates them for it, and the street gets planks instead.
- Her Wages Bought the House at Fourth and Plum. The Sheriff’s Deed Was Canceled.
Elizabeth Burkett turned a $700 gift into a hotel and a home. When a Pierce County judgment against her husband threatened it, a Thurston County judge traced the property back to her own labor.
- The Ox-Yoke Judge Who Kept Olympia the Capital
O. C. Hewitt, Lincoln’s chief justice of Washington Territory and the father of Odd Fellowship in the state, died at 82 in East Tumwater after a frontier life that included burying massacre victims, winning a Supreme Court case, and saving Olympia’s capital status.
- Two Miles Perched on the Lower Circle of a Rainbow
A Shelton legislator's private letter describing a steamer passage up Hammersley's Inlet becomes the best prose in the paper — a circle of prismatic color, starfish, glaciers and one awestruck captain.
- The $10 Million Dream to Turn Olympia Into the Hub of the Northwest
J. R. Chaplin pitched a grand Olympia Improvement Company and a ship canal from Black Lake through the Chehalis to Grays Harbor—enough, he promised, to leave Seattle, Tacoma and Portland behind.
- The Captain Who Sailed North to Sell Ice — and Found There Wasn't Any
A would-be ice merchant arrived in Puget Sound expecting a frozen market. The climate had other plans, so his crew started cutting piling instead — and stumbled into the region's real fortune.
- Hot Ashes Nearly Burn Down Olympia’s Pride
A carelessly discarded batch of hot ashes smoldered for hours in the Capitol Steam Laundry before bursting into flame beneath the Olympia Hotel.
- There's "Dough" in Every Street Contract: A Preacher Takes On City Hall
Rev. Napoleon Hoagland reads the nation's municipal record aloud — reeking streets, a million-dollar franchise given away, councilmen who elsewhere would count themselves lucky to stay out of prison — and asks why democratic America breeds more thieves than the Tsar's Europe.
- Resign Now: The Tribune's Plan to Get Olympia Out of Debt Thirty Days Sooner
With the city paying $1,500 a month — $50 a day — in interest on its outstanding warrants, the editor demands that the outgoing mayor and three councilmen step down early so the incoming council can start refinancing immediately instead of waiting for January 12, 1892.
- The Streetcar 'Jack Pot Bank' That Kept Olympia's Railway Running
George Marvin Savage had a franchise to protect and no money to pay his workers—so he divided each day's fares into four pasteboard boxes and called it co-operation.
- Olympia's Republican Bargain: Bring the State Convention Home—and Send a Delegate to Minneapolis
A local editorial pushes Thurston County Republicans to raise $1,500, host the state convention in the capital, and still claim a seat at the national convention—instead of trading one prize for the other.
- A Schoolhouse Fight Over Who Builds Olympia
Local architects and mechanics cry foul after the school board quietly accepts a Tacoma-drawn plan for the new high school.
- An Editor Caught Lying About the Deal That Made a U.S. Senator
J. W. Lysons says the collector's removal had nothing to do with Boss McGraw's bargain — but the Tribune has his own dispatch from Olympia, sent during the fight, to prove otherwise.
- The Polls Closed an Hour Early, and the Court Threw the Election Out
A Jefferson County school-clerk contest reaches the state Supreme Court, where a statute's silence and a 7 p.m. closing time decide who holds office.
- The 15-Cent Street Signs That Became a Graft Scandal
A councilman nicknamed 'Boss' hands out a street-sign contract on his own authority, and the town asks why it is buying throwaway tin markers instead of signs that last — at the people's expense.