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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1871 | 1 |
| 1872 | 11 |
| 1876 | 63 |
| 1877 | 45 |
| 1878 | 22 |
| 1879 | 3 |
| 1880 | 21 |
| 1882 | 15 |
| 1883 | 65 |
| 1884 | 28 |
| 1885 | 63 |
| 1886 | 38 |
| 1887 | 39 |
| 1888 | 41 |
| 1889 | 104 |
| 1890 | 4 |
| 1891 | 32 |
| 1892 | 145 |
| 1893 | 154 |
| 1894 | 188 |
| 1895 | 205 |
| 1897 | 2 |
| 1898 | 5 |
| 1899 | 45 |
| 1900 | 1 |
| 1902 | 1 |
| 1903 | 25 |
| 1904 | 10 |
| 1905 | 1 |
| 1907 | 1 |
| 1908 | 1 |
| 1909 | 6 |
| 1916 | 1 |
| 1929 | 1 |
1,387 stories matching back
- 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 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 Wooden Revolver That Freed Ten Prisoners
Thomas Blanck held a jailer hostage with a carved fake gun, emptied the King County jail, and vanished into Seattle's streets.
- 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.
- '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.
- The Telephone Franchise Fight: A Speculator's Bid Rejected
Aldermen refused S. H. Piles a phone franchise because he wouldn't name his backers or put up a bond — and the competitor they did trust never built a line.
- 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.
- A Morphine Death at the Concord House
Allan McDonald, a Toronto-born piano player struggling with morphine, was found dead in a Seattle rooming house with a jealous letter beside him and 85 cents in his pocket.
- 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.
- The Elevator Man Who Fell Through the Transom
Joseph Albright had run the elevator in the Seattle National Bank building for barely a month when a half-second's slip crushed him between cage and door — and sent his body through the glass over the ground-floor entrance.
- A Hanging in the Armory: The Unpopular Corporal and the Men Who Stuffed His Uniform
Company E turned a grudge into theatre — an effigy rigged with an electric-light wire, a pair of odd-coloured glasses and a chalked gravestone — and a military court may follow.
- The Streetcar Men Asked Seattle to Set Their Wages. The City's Lawyer Said No.
A union petition to write conductor and motorman pay into the street railway franchise ran into the corporation counsel's constitutional wall — so the council sent it back to committee to try again as an ordinance.
- A Seattle Merchant Sold His Stock, Then Vanished — and His Creditors Want Him Back
Simon Rumpf disappeared sometime after selling the Diamond Palace's goods to J. K. Basye & Co. Detectives are hunting Nuremberg, Honolulu, and a cache of missing merchandise they suspect never left the city.
- The Forger Who Ordered Champagne to the Mansion of J. M. Colman
For two weeks a smooth-talking stranger worked Front Street with forged order slips and a taste for the good stuff — until six bottles of champagne went to the wrong address.
- The Mule-Mounted Howitzer Fiasco
An ambitious Army experiment at a Western fort goes hilariously and dangerously wrong when a cannon-strapped mule decides to take matters into his own hooves.
- An 1889 Patient Testimonial for Dr. J. Eugene Jordan
A nineteenth-century resident of the Seattle area shares a harrowing, vivid account of surviving chronic illness through a controversial 'histogenetic' medical system.
- A Double-Header at Madison Park
Seattle's local baseball team endures a grueling day of two back-to-back games, marked by high-energy fielding and unruly fans.
- The Raid on South Fifth Street
A police raid on a gambling party in Seattle’s Chinatown leads to a chaotic scene of fleeing patrons and two arrests.
- The Circus Crooks Meet Chief Rogers' Shadow
Seattle police pair a detective with every known short-change and gim-flam man at the circus, but not before an old islander is nearly taken for $60.
Also about this, in other words
- 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.
- 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 Switchback Brawl
A violent confrontation breaks out between railroad workers and locals over a disputed switchback rail line.