Research the archive
Narrow 27,002 newspaper stories by words, years, place, newspaper and subject. See when and where they ran, then download what you find.
Put a phrase in quotes ("rent strike") or leave a word out with a minus (strike -baseball). Old scans misspell names, so when little is found, near-spellings are offered.
Refine1 on
Show the numbers
| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1897 | 6 |
| 1898 | 11 |
| 1899 | 2 |
19 stories matching full
- The Glasshouse Farm That Fed Seattle's Hotels
In 1898, an editor toured a Lake Washington model farm where seven greenhouses and a prize Jersey herd supplied the city's finest tables.
- A Deadly Mistake in the Wilds
A local man's near-fatal encounter with water hemlock serves as a grim warning about the importance of botanical knowledge in rural life.
- The Great Wheat Bottleneck
Eastern Washington farmers face a crisis as railroads prioritize long-haul freight over local grain shipments, leaving warehouses overflowing.
- Enumclaw Farmers Cut Out the Insurance Companies
Tired of paying premiums to distant corporations, farmers around Enumclaw formed their own mutual fire and lightning insurance company — one neighbor pledging to help another.
- Counterfeit Yakima Potatoes on the Sound
A Tacoma paint dealer tells the valley's paper that Puget Sound merchants were passing off second-grade Western Washington spuds as Yakima's prized crop — and that in a full year he got the genuine article only three times.
- The Debts a Country Owes Its Farmers — and Its Farmers' Wives
An 1898 farm-column editorial tallies what rural Washington neglects: untrained road supervisors, school directors so illiterate the legislature had to bar them, and farm women who never see a newspaper or a neighbor.
- Six Mowers in the Alfalfa: Inside the Northwest's Largest Irrigated Ranch
The superintendent of the Moxee Company's farm walks a reporter through 680 acres of alfalfa, 180 of barley and a hop yard rented out for a quarter of the bale — and explains why California-style hay stacking won't do for Yakima Valley stockmen.
- Seattle Sets Its Sights on Honolulu's Grocery List
A Seattle schooner sails for the islands with flour, hay and shingles aboard, and Hawaiian importers begin to wonder whether they still need San Francisco at all.
- A Dry-Hills Gamble: Sixty Settlers and a Well
When boosters claimed Yakima’s brown hills could farm, thirteen families put up $25 each to drill for water and prove it.
- Six Restaurants, One Sacrificial Lamb: Seattle's War on Fake Butter
Six Seattle restaurants caught passing oleomargarine off as butter cut a deal with the dairy commissioner — but not before white proprietors tried to make the Japanese owner of the California take the fall.
- The Fumigation Didn't Take: Live Scale Found on Japanese Oranges
A King County fruit-growers' committee inspects a shipment of imported oranges that the state's own commissioner had fumigated, finds the mealy bug and scale still alive, and demands stricter enforcement before the fruit goes on sale.
- While Seattle Chased Klondike Gold, Portland Quietly Bought the Farm
An 1897 editorial warns Puget Sound that its Klondike outfitting boom is blinding it to a $150 million agricultural trade that Portland is stealing from the inland Northwest.
- Judge Hanford Draws the Line: Sheep Can't Graze on Railroad Land Without Consent
A federal court ruling in Yakima County upholds the Northern Pacific Railway's right to protect its unenclosed lands from sheep, setting a precedent for property rights and land use in the West.
- The $80,000 Cranberry Bog Behind the Ilwaco Beach
A state commissioner tours Pacific County's cranberry marsh — 1,600 acres, 7,280 bushels shipped to San Francisco, 200 pickers at fifty cents a bushel, and a company openly hoping to replace its Chinese crew with white labor.
- Seattle's Fruit Growers Take On the Wholesalers — and City Hall
A lively meeting of the King County Fruitgrowers' Society pushes for a cooperative cannery, hears a pioneer judge denounce the middlemen who ship in California's cast-offs, and calls out a city council that once tried to license peddlers out of business.
- The Palouse Wheat Boom Was a Gold Mine—Until the Debt Came Due
An agricultural professor traces the Palouse’s speculative wheat economy: inflated land purchases, the rain-ruined crop of 1893, the panic that followed, and the sudden recovery by 1897.
- The Berry Math That Made Puyallup
A fruit-growers' manager laid out the 1898 economics of Western Washington berries: $1 a crate, 75-cent hired labor, and a cannery on the horizon.
- The Gospel of the Cow: A Governor Tells Washington Dairymen How to Get Rich
At the state dairymen's convention, Wisconsin's Gov. W. D. Hoard preaches cleanliness, cold wells and the Chicago market — and spins the tale of Carl the German farmer who turned stinking butter into $50,000.
- The Dairy Commissioner’s War on Adulterated Food
A Washington dairy official warns that fake honey, poisoned candy, oleomargarine and brewers’ grain are cheating farmers — and demands stronger pure-food laws.