Research the archive
Narrow 22,457 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.
Refine
Show the numbers
| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1858 | 4 |
| 1859 | 4 |
| 1860 | 2 |
| 1861 | 5 |
| 1862 | 6 |
| 1863 | 3 |
| 1864 | 2 |
| 1865 | 1 |
| 1871 | 1 |
| 1872 | 13 |
| 1876 | 95 |
| 1877 | 79 |
| 1878 | 44 |
| 1879 | 6 |
| 1880 | 24 |
| 1882 | 18 |
| 1883 | 92 |
| 1884 | 40 |
| 1885 | 93 |
| 1886 | 52 |
| 1887 | 60 |
| 1888 | 68 |
| 1889 | 170 |
| 1890 | 29 |
| 1891 | 114 |
| 1892 | 302 |
| 1893 | 254 |
| 1894 | 299 |
| 1895 | 72 |
| 1897 | 5 |
| 1898 | 7 |
| 1899 | 56 |
| 1900 | 9 |
| 1902 | 5 |
| 1903 | 118 |
| 1904 | 104 |
| 1905 | 5 |
| 1908 | 3 |
| 1909 | 114 |
| 1910 | 12 |
| 1911 | 17 |
| 1912 | 4 |
| 1914 | 23 |
| 1915 | 23 |
| 1916 | 60 |
| 1917 | 30 |
| 1918 | 3 |
| 1919 | 2 |
| 1922 | 3 |
| 1923 | 11 |
| 1924 | 9 |
| 1925 | 8 |
2,583 stories matching back
- 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.
- Pay for a Job That Wasn't There: Seattle's Employment-Agency Scam
A city council committee heard workers describe paying fees to G.W. Crane's employment office and arriving to find no jobs, with agents accused of splitting fees with contractors.
- The Mine That Stood Still: How One Man’s Leave Sparked a Labor War in Newcastle
A dispute over a fired miner named Kenny Ramsay has shut down the Newcastle coal mines, pitting the Knights of Labor against the company and threatening to flood the pits if arbitration fails.
- The Art of the 'Back-Seat Sermon'
A Seattle preacher shares his cunning, slightly cynical strategy to force young couples in the back pews to stop courting and actually listen to the gospel.
- Two Men Asked to Test a Seattle Schooner. Then They Tried to Kill Its Captain.
A would-be buyer and his genteel companion lured Capt. Jud La Moure into Puget Sound, attacked him with a lead sounding weight, and demanded his gold watch—until he produced a hidden revolver.
- The 175-Pound Ghost That Fought Back
A skeptic grabbed a séance spirit, discovered a 175-pound man under the gauze, and touched off a fistfight in a Fremont parlor.
- Guns at the Polls: Seattle’s First Ward Primary Erupts in a Street Brawl
Sheriff Woolery and saloon man John Considine tried to seize a Republican primary by arresting the election judges; Chief Rogers and his police fought back with warrants, clubs and drawn revolvers.
- The Judge Who Gambled Away His Office: Soderberg’s Dramatic Resignation
After the grand jury returned five indictments for extortion and malfeasance in office, District Attorney Joseph Soderberg walked into court, tendered his resignation, and declared he would repay every illegal fee to the county treasury.
- The Coal Creek Massacre: A Coroner’s Inquest into the Battle Between Knights of Labor and Mine Owners
In January 1890, Seattle Sheriff Cochrane deployed militia to Newcastle to suppress a miners' strike. When a riot erupted at Coal Creek, one man was killed and ten arrested. The subsequent coroner's inquest revealed a chaotic scene where union men claimed self-defense against armed mine owners, while the sheriff dismissed the Knights of Labor as 'too excitable.'
- The Rockets Turned Around: Tacoma's Fourth of July Went Up in a Sheet of Flame
A spark touched off the entire $500 pyrotechnic stock at Wright Park, driving rockets and bombs into a crowd of thousands and leaving women and children burned, trampled and briefly lost in the smoke.
- A Christmas on the Ice King: The Climb That Saw Rainier Smoking
In 1894, Major Ingraham led six men, seven homing pigeons, and a camera onto Mount Rainier’s glaciers. They came back with frostbite, a story of steam and smoke rising from the crater—and one pigeon missing.
- The Case for Political Asylum
Tacoma’s newspaper calls on the federal government to stop extraditing Russian political refugees, citing the nation's own revolutionary roots.
- The Unlikely Companions of the Dairy Farm
A persistent hen and a reluctant cow form an inseparable, if highly annoying, bond in rural Washington.
- The General, the Strikers, and the Company That Wouldn't Ride With a Scab Crew
Brig. Gen. A. V. Curry explains why he handed the rifles back to Spokane's Company G after its men refused to travel with a substitute crew — and why he thought the colonel who disarmed them had acted too hastily.
- 'We Can Fight Both Them and the Company': Seattle's Railroad Strike Falters
As Northern Pacific engineers straggle back to work in Tacoma and Seattle, a union chairman vows to fight on — while dynamite vanishes and a log train is fired on near Puyallup.
- The Unlikely Tale of the 'Pull-Back' Train Stopper
A small-town mechanic's wild invention—a massive rubber cable designed to hook trains that left without their passengers—actually worked.
- Seven Hundred Miles on Horseback: Two Seattle Men Ride the Raw Edge of Eastern Washington
C. W. Loomis and E. D. Manning return from a month in the saddle — snow-choked passes, waterless deserts, blasting on the Great Northern grade, a mining camp on edge after a killing, and a Colville reservation not yet legally open to whites.
- Free Mail Delivery Is Coming to Olympia—If the City Numbers Its Houses
Postmaster V. A. Milroy says carriers, boxes and three new routes will be ready by New Year’s Day, but two-thirds of the city’s houses still lack numbers and property owners must pay to add them.
- The Moss-Cloaked Giants of Bay Center
A teacher’s letter from the Pacific Northwest frontier describes a landscape of colossal trees and lush undergrowth, challenging the myth of the harsh pioneer struggle.
- The Murder in the Bunkhouse North of Auburn
A young Japanese labor contractor was beaten and killed as he slept in a cabin on J.W. Nails's farm; a roommate was jailed while blood trails, a loaded musket and an opium pipe deepened the mystery.
- The Child on the Train
A conductor discovers a feverish little girl wandering a train alone with only her doll for comfort.
- The Beating of Henry Brown: A Runaway Elevator Boy and a Family's Violent Secret
A 14-year-old black elevator operator flees his home after a savage whipping by his father, revealing a tangled story of poverty, pride, and punishment in 1894 Seattle.
- The Letter That Turned a Railroad Strike Into a Frontier War
A Tacoma cavalryman's lurid account of fighting Indigenous people in the Olympics and riding through a strike reads like pulp fiction — and the paper knew it.
- The Cabin Boy Who Escaped a Shipwreck
A teenage runaway from England found adventure, fire, and a new life in Tacoma after deserting his vessel.
- The Concordia Beer Hall Heist
A cool-headed band of thieves broke into a Seattle saloon, cracked the safe, and held an impromptu dinner party with stolen beer and cigars before vanishing.
Also about this, in other words
- The Bear That Bit Back: Deputy Collector’s Narrow Escape from Tax-Collecting Felines
In a bizarre twist of frontier justice in Toledo, Washington, two tame bears were unleashed on a deputy revenue collector after their Italian owner refused to pay taxes.
- The Roll Showed No Absences: Seattle Mourns Vernie Backus, 12, Drowned
The Boys' Brigade of the First Presbyterian Church enters a formal minute on the drowning of a twelve-year-old brother — remembered first for perfect attendance, and his parents commended to heaven.
- Rejected from the Front
A local young man's enlistment dreams are shattered by a minor physical disability just before his unit deploys for WWI.
- A Laundryman's Return to a Hostile City
A Chinese resident attempts to collect back pay after being expelled from Seattle.
- The Girl Who Fought Back: A Chippie’s Cane Meets His Cane
When a fruit inspector’s daughter was harassed on Columbia Street, her father didn’t just call the police—he delivered a lesson in justice that left the harasser running for his life.
- The Curse of the Mossback Landowner
An editorial critique of local speculators and property owners blamed for stalling Aberdeen's growth during the post-boom downturn.
- The Switchback Brawl
A violent confrontation breaks out between railroad workers and locals over a disputed switchback rail line.
- A Father Returns from the Skagit to Claim His Own
A man arrives from the mining camps to marry the woman he fathered a child with, hoping to secure their future after she was jailed for an alleged act of desperation.