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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1889 | 3 |
| 1891 | 1 |
| 1892 | 5 |
| 1893 | 4 |
| 1894 | 4 |
| 1895 | 4 |
21 stories matching improvis
- The Great Escape: Two Prisoners Vanish from Seattle’s Basement Jail
In a display of audacity and desperation, two men held on smuggling and liquor charges crawled through a torn-off board in a water closet to flee the U.S. Marshal’s improvised prison beneath the Clancy Building.
- Homemade Cannon Blast on Yesler Avenue
Two young boys narrowly escape death while attempting to build an improvised firework cannon on the Fourth of July.
- Tragedy on the Wenatchee River
Two more victims succumb to injuries following the collapse of a Great Northern bridge, as details emerge of the frantic, improvised rescue efforts.
- A Woodsman's Night Terrors
A Snoqualmie man's journey home turns into a desperate flight from wildlife after his lantern fails.
- The Great Seattle Balding Summit
After the Great Fire of 1889, fifty-two insurance adjusters gathered to assess the wreckage—and accidentally became the most famous bald-headed group on the Northwest coast.
- The Great Buckley Fire Wipes Out East Main Street
A lumber town’s business district is reduced to ash after a mill fire jumps the tracks and consumes an entire city block.
- The Fishhook Baited With Human Flesh
In a Port Townsend hotel, a sailor displays the improvised wire hook that kept survivors of the wrecked whaler James Allen alive after the disaster in Bering Sea.
- The Brutal Legacy of Seattle's Vigilante Justice
A citizen letter from 1894 reflects on the city's dark history of mob violence and the perceived failure of the legal system to address crime.
- The Nimrod of Pioneer Days
A legendary deer hunter, famous for his incredible shooting, falls ill as the city remembers his frontier exploits.
- Point Defiance Dynamite Disaster
A workplace explosion at Point Defiance Park leaves one man dead and several others gravely injured.
- The Bathtub Comedy That Saved the Day
A struggling young couple in a Seattle play find their only salvation in a piece of furniture that isn't quite what it seems.
- The Slungshot Saloon Brawl
A scion of an ex-governor, fueled by opium and drink, faces arrest for a brazen assault in a Second Street tavern.
- A Dugout, a Gunny-Sack Sail, and a Boy Lost on Lake Washington
Harvey Wehn was 15 when his makeshift sail capsized near Taylor's mill. A 4-year-old was the only witness.
- The Perils of 'Honest' John Kelly
A prospector’s winter isolation in the Cascade mountains turns into a desperate fight for survival against avalanches and mountain lions.
- The Betting Frenzy at Pacific and Tenth
A high-stakes municipal election turns Tacoma’s city center into a chaotic, money-soaked spectacle where candidates bet on themselves and crowds swarm the streets in political delirium.
- The Contractor Died in the Church He Was Building
Charles R. Brown, a prosperous Seattle builder, collapsed in the gallery of the unfinished First Presbyterian Church—three minutes from work to death.
- A Five-Cent Lunchroom Where Men Are Barred
In the Shorey building, Mrs. Flora D. Brown runs a noonday refuge for Seattle’s shop and factory women, serving soup, coffee and a welcome for a few pennies—and keeping the men firmly outside.
- A Jury Called the Franklin Mine Fire Arson. Thirty-Seven Miners Were Already Dead.
A coroner's jury found that someone deliberately set the fire that suffocated 37 workers in the Franklin mine. The only survivor described how one opened door and one stopped fan turned the gangway into a death trap.
- The Tiny Republic of Anacortes: Boys, Shells, and Self-Government
In 1893, a group of Anacortes boys turned beachcombing into a natural-history club with a constitution, dues, and an exhibition that drew the whole town.
- The Trial of Judge Wickersham: A Tacoma Scandal Over Land, Lies, and 'Delirium'
In February 1889, the trial of a powerful federal judge in Tacoma exposed a web of political corruption, land fraud, and sexual scandal involving a young woman named Sadie Brantner.
- Thirty-Seven Miners Died 150 Feet From Safety
An 1894 coroner's jury in Franklin, Washington, heard how a small fire in the Oregon Improvement Company's coal mine became a wall of smoke — and why the men who could have escaped stayed to fight it.