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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1891 | 7 |
| 1892 | 3 |
10 stories matching thoroughfar
- A Deal to Fix Maple Park—If the City Does Its Part
Maple Park's property owners offer to grade their streets if the city fixes the central park—and a plan surfaces to remake the square in front of the new courthouse.
- 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.
- 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.
- Olympia’s ‘Miserable’ Street Railway Is Holding the City Back
An 1891 editorial demands that the city cancel the Olympia Street Railway’s charter and clear Main and Fourth streets for electric cars, arguing the two rickety horse cars are a disgrace and a drag on growth.
- The Tunnel Under Seventh Street: Two Property Owners Take On the Railroad
Captain Hatch seeks $10,000 and J. A. Silsby $5,000, blaming the Northern Pacific's new tunnel for damage to their buildings — while the railroad insists the city, not the company, should pay.
- The State Draws a Street Grid Across Olympia's Tide Flats
The tide land appraisers lay out 150-foot avenues over the Olympia waterfront, naming them for Isaac Stevens, Governor Ferry and Columbia Lancaster, and reserving 300 feet of harbor for wharves, slips and commerce.
- Who Owns the Shoreline? Olympia’s Tide-Land Fight
A citizens’ commission debated street grids, meander lines, and property values as appraisers prepared to price the Olympia waterfront.
- The Brick Blocks That Told Olympia It Had Arrived
In 1891, three pressed-brick buildings rose along Olympia’s business streets—and boosters read them as proof the wooden capital was becoming a real city.
- 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.
- Olympia’s Booster Year: Brick, Bridges and a 50,000-Person Promise
As 1891 closed, the capital city counted $3 million in new buildings, a record bridge, electric lights and new rail lines — and predicted 50,000 residents within a decade.