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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1891 | 73 |
| 1892 | 58 |
131 stories matching present
- The City Was Broke. The Paper Wanted the Mayor and Council to Quit.
With Olympia's finances in a muddle and a bond election already doomed by irregularities, the Tribune pressed Mayor Kerr and three councilmen to resign early so the newly elected government could take charge.
- A Chinese Mission School Opens in an Old Olympia Schoolhouse
Eleven Chinese men attended the first meeting of a Presbyterian Sunday-school mission on Fifth Street, where, according to the Church News, several quickly learned the alphabet.
- The Courthouse That Couldn’t: Contractors Fall Months Behind as Penalties Mount
Thurston County’s new courthouse is five months late, triggering a $20-a-day penalty and a standoff over withheld payments.
- The council met in secret to dig itself out of the hole it dug
A closed-door caucus of Olympia's aldermen wrestles with the bond debt their own street work created — then adjourns for drinks, with the press locked out.
- They Burned Letters to the Dead on Ayer's Hill
Olympia's Chinese community gathered at a hillside cemetery in 1891 to honor eight departed countrymen with roast pork, red candles, wine and paper messages sent into the next world.
- Thirty Men Want One City Job as Olympia’s New Council Takes Over
A patronage scramble greets Olympia’s incoming administration, with a crowd of applicants for street commissioner and a proposal to cut the police force while adding more streetlights.
- Olympia Puts Its Bond Mess on Ice—and the Mayor Objects
A council committee recommends leaving the 1891 bond tangle to the next administration; the mayor warns the city is “in a mud hole” and wants the courts to force a decision.
- The Only Job Worth Having in a Bankrupt Little City
Nobody wants a seat on the council, but five men are scrambling for the treasurer's office and its commissions on $200,000 of debt.
- The Last-Minute Fight Over Olympia's First Real High School
On the very morning of the school-bond election, board member J. C. Rathbun fires back at the district clerk's eleventh-hour argument against building — insisting a proper high school would make Olympia the educational capital of Washington.
- Women, Workers, and a $40,000 School Bond
Olympia prepared to vote on a new high school, with women at the polls and labor demanding that local hands build it.
- 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.
- The Engineer Who Says Olympia Stiffed Him for Sewer Plans
A civil engineer hired to draft Olympia’s sewers says the city accepted his $700 bid, starved him of data, then canceled his contract and paid another man $1,500 for plans he calls a public nuisance.
- Olympia’s Main Street to be Ripped Up for Electric Rails
A long-standing conflict between local transit companies is resolved, clearing the way for new track construction and pole installation.
- A Street Fight Over Page Street’s Gulch
Contractor I. Liberman prepared to bill Olympia about $100 a day after the city suspended work on an Eastside street improvement.
- Olympia's grand new courthouse rises — without its clock
The tower climbs to 149 feet, but the commissioners have decided against the $1,000 clock, and townspeople are not pleased.
- The White-and-Gold Trolleys That Would Link Olympia and Tumwater
In February 1892, Olympia Light & Power awarded a $70,000 contract for a four-mile electric street railway from Ayer's Hill to Tumwater—built with local labor and Pullman-style cars.
- The Death Rate Was Up. The Health Officer Blamed the Syringe.
In 1891 Olympia's health officer reported an unprecedented mortality spike—and pointed to morphine and cocaine injections, with young women said to be using them 'just for fun.'
- A Constitutional Oversight Stalls the Penitentiary’s Jute Plant
Lawmakers intended to renew an old appropriation for prison-made jute, but a procedural misstep holds up $10,000 and suspends work until the attorney general rules.
- 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.
- Court Opens Salmon Bay to Harbor-Line Rules
The state Supreme Court reverses a lower-court writ and lets harbor line commissioners regulate Salmon Bay—even though the bay nearly drains at low tide—because Puget Sound freight boats still use it at high water.
- A Road Along the Water — and a Pitch to Merge Olympia and Tumwater
A Tumwater booster argues a beach road is the only sensible link between the two towns, and floats consolidating them into one city to build it.
- 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.
- A Gold Cure Too Late for Robert J. Walker
A nephew of James G. Blaine dies in a Tacoma hospital, and the Olympia Tribune wonders whether a dubious 'bichloride of gold' treatment could have saved him.
- The Town Where Horses Wore Wooden Shoes
La Conner grew slowly on a rocky knoll in the Skagit delta, diked its tidal flats, and shipped out hay by the ton—while its horses clumped through spring mud in wooden moccasins.
- The Trolley That Had to Buy a Gulch
A streetcar line blocked by a ravine gets its way to Harrison Avenue — for the price of a $1,630 strip of C. M. Moore's block 48.