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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1888 | 8 |
| 1889 | 10 |
| 1891 | 7 |
| 1892 | 28 |
| 1893 | 33 |
| 1894 | 23 |
| 1895 | 38 |
147 stories matching float
- The Floating Saloon vs. the Everett Barge Works
A superintendent at the Everett barge works fights back against a 'floating drink shop' that threatened to demoralize his workforce.
- The Strange Case of the Drifting Float
When a massive, expensive city-owned float vanished from its moorings, it sparked a mystery that ended in a quiet cove across the bay.
- Teredo Worms Cut a Seattle Wharf Adrift
A shipworm-weakened pier at the foot of Dearborn Street collapsed into Elliott Bay, sending a warehouse down with a crash and leaving the wreckmaster to haul a floating dock back to shore.
- Fatal Fall at Manning's Wharf
A young laborer dies after a forty-foot fall on a piledriver at the Seattle waterfront.
- Seattle Voters Weigh Debt Bonds and Sewer Tunnel
Seattle voters head to the polls to decide whether to refinance the city's floating debt and complete the critical Lake Union sewer tunnel.
- The Dead Horses That Taught Tacoma How to Raise Sunken Ships
A Tacoma patent company says its collapsible air bags can lift wrecks from the sea floor—a trick supposedly inspired by a bloated boatload of horses in the Ohio River. Investors are already fighting over the fortune.
- The Tragedy at the Stetson-Post Mill
A three-week-old boy was discovered floating in Seattle’s waters, a stark and somber reminder of the hidden precarity and desperation in the city’s frontier industrial era.
- The Tailor Who Floated
A tailor discovered dead in Lake Washington defied the depths thanks to a gruesome phenomenon of physics.
- The Cudahy Packing Plant Fire
A catastrophic fire destroys a waterfront warehouse, turning tons of meat into a 'seething mass of flames.'
- The Lawyer and the Rubber Coat
A Seattle attorney pulls a local government worker from a watery death in the harbor by the tails of his coat.
- The Tragedy at the Tide Flats
A missing man is found dead in the bay, ending a days-long search in the southern waterfront.
- The Seidlitz-Powder Scheme to Raise a Sunken Ship
Confident investors bought a wreck off Grays Harbor and promised to lift it with secret chemicals, carbonic gas, and a patent they had not quite finished.
- Bears on Driftwood and Bridge Washouts in the Skykomish River
Heavy rains trigger a freshet in the mountains, leading to washed-out bridges and one very calm bear navigating the rapids on a log.
- Seattle’s Schools Ask Voters to Make the Ledger Balance
With teachers discounting their own salary warrants, the school board calls a special election to validate a $37,000 floating debt and put the district on a cash basis.
- The Silent Engine Room
A young sawmill worker drowns unnoticed while on the job at Lake Union.
- The Great 'Pulp' Boom of Seattle
While Seattle’s real estate developers were busy building the city, the local papers were fixated on an odd, failed experiment to tow a massive Canadian timber raft down the Pacific Coast to California—a project that ended in a floating, ocean-clogging disaster.
- Seattle's Grand Independence Day Jubilee
A massive display of civic pride, featuring a grand parade of labor unions, military companies, and elaborate trade floats, marks the most ambitious celebration in the city’s history.
- City Council Faces Tough Choices on Infrastructure Spending
Proposals to fund sewer systems and an electric light plant pit civic necessity against concerns over rising debt and wasteful spending.
- An Old Engineer's Body in the Harbor, and a Hole No One Could Explain
John Hall had run locomotives for thirty years. Too old for the road, out of work for weeks, he was found floating in Tacoma harbor with a wound the coroner called a bruise.
- The Price of Early Statehood
Fresh from statehood, Washington’s auditor warns of a looming floating debt and a chaotic tax system that left farmers and county officials struggling.
- J.C. Mills Lost in the Swollen Columbia
A man disappears into a whirlpool near Bridgeport, highlighting the treacherous nature of the river during high water.
- The Poet and the Plagiarized Verse
A Tacoma man discovers his own lines in a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem, sparking a debate over the poet's 'clipping' habits.
- Drowning at the Toboggan Slide
A young immigrant perishes in the waters of Lake Washington during a day of recreation.
- The Opium Ring and the Floating Body: A Seattle Murder Mystery
When Abner Abbott’s body was found in the tide flats, suspicion fell on a smuggling ring. Was he silenced for knowing too much about a $400 check from China?
- Three Times Overboard
Two fishermen survive a harrowing ordeal in the high seas off Cape Flattery.