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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1891 | 26 |
| 1892 | 22 |
48 stories matching need
- The Women of Olympia Organize for the Poor
A local group of women forms a relief society to provide food and clothing to the city's needy during the winter months.
- Olympia’s Firefighters Needed Rubber Suits, Beds—and a Paycheck
An editorial urges the city to equip, house and compensate its firemen, noting that volunteers had spent their own money and lost clothing fighting the steamer Eastern Oregon fire.
- The Streetcar That Would Wake Olympia: A $250,000 Bet on Electric Rails to Tumwater Falls
Olympia's gas and electric companies merge, buy up the Deschutes waterfalls, and float gold bonds to run the first electric cars between town and Tumwater.
- A Sick Child, an Empty Cupboard, and $22 in the Collection Plate
A Unitarian minister in Tacoma argues that charity is only a bandage, and that a man who works hard and still cannot feed his family is the church's real problem to solve.
- 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.
- Orting’s New Soldiers’ Home Is Running on 47 Cents a Day
Forty-six veterans—including a father who lost three sons at Antietam—are already living at the state’s new home, which needs a federal per-resident allowance and a library.
- 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.
- Spokane Taxpayers Revolt Before the Bonds Come Due
After selling $1.2 million in bonds, Spokane's council kept planning improvements. Property owners talked injunctions and credit, and the Ledger saw a lesson for every taxpayer.
- 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.
- Olympia's Electric Road Begins With a Land Drive
The Olympia Electric Light Power Company wants land donations for a streetcar line, while engineers prepare to grade Main Street from 26th to 29th.
- Andrew Carnegie’s Advice to Washington
The steel magnate urges the state to showcase its vast iron ore deposits at the upcoming World’s Fair.
- Thirteen Carloads of Rail and Four Miles of Track: Olympia Gets Its Electric Streetcar
Delayed by a blizzard back East, the rails are finally in Tacoma and due tonight — and a crew will start laying them down the middle of Fourth Street tomorrow morning.
- 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.
- A Freethinker Takes On the Pulpit in Olympia
At Liberal Hall, P. D. Moore answers a minister’s sermon on law with a call for a religion of nature, reason, and good conduct rather than wrath and dogma.
- Thurston County’s $3,985 Court House Contract Went to a New York Firm
Commissioners signed off on metal vault furniture for the new county courthouse, trimming the order from $5,000 and choosing a Rochester manufacturer after inspecting competing bids in Seattle and Tacoma.
- The Fight to Keep Olympia's Public Works Money in Olympia
A local editor takes credit for shaming the city council into hiring home labor — and warns that out-of-town contractors are bleeding the capital dry.
- The Old Capitol Gets a Hurried Remodel Before the Legislature Returns
Secretary Weir is shoring up sagging foundations, rebuilding the Senate chamber, and squeezing five or six more years out of Olympia's aging statehouse.
- 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.
- Olympia's High School Bond Fight, Priced at 25 Cents
The Tribune urges voters to approve a $40,000 school bond, rebutting claims of contractor influence and calculating the cost to a $7,000 homeowner at about a quarter.
- Workingmen Open a People’s Forum—and Hear That Olympia Sits on a Volcano
Two hundred residents packed Columbia Hall for the first of a series of public-question meetings, where speakers warned of hard times and one declared the city was on the edge of an eruption.
- Benefit Concert to Build Schoolhouse for Sherman Valley Settlers
Olympia's musical talent rallies to fund a school for rural children in Sherman Valley.
- Surveyors Find a Rich Country Behind a Brutal Trail
A government surveying party returns from Chehalis County with tales of an impassable road, a hotel meal that required a salmon spear, and soil and timber worth the misery.
- Olympia Collegiate Institute Is Busting at the Seams
With more than 175 students enrolled, a new lecture series underway, and a library outgrowing its shelves, the C.C.I. is already talking about a bigger building.
- The State Is Broke: Why Olympia Needs an Emergency Legislature
A supreme court ruling on university lands has left Washington's brand-new state government without money to pay its own debts — and the Olympia Tribune argues the legislature must be hauled back to the capital before the state's credit collapses.
- A Downtown Church Outgrows Its 1856 Home
Olympia's Methodists are quietly preparing to raise a new church at Fifth and Adams, honoring the pioneers who built the old one on Fourth — and the 375 souls who now fill the pews.