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87 stories matching chiefli
- Free Wool, Free Lumber: Washington's Mill Towns Brace for the Tariff Shock
Seattle and Tacoma manufacturers warn that the new Havemeyer tariff will cut wages, ruin sheep raisers and hand the lumber trade to Canadian timbermen.
- The Judge Who Was Only 'Sober as a Judge'
A legendary anecdote from the Seattle police court where a witness’s inadvertent insult revealed the bench's own notorious reputation for intoxication.
- The Hungry Democrats of Adams County
A local lawyer files a mock legal complaint humorously detailing the political squabbling over patronage and power in late 19th-century Washington.
- The Last Ride of the 'Paper Railroad'
When Seattle’s homegrown lifeline, the Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern, was absorbed by the Northern Pacific, the city lost its independence—but gained its seat at the table of transcontinental commerce.
- The Great Railway Strike Hits Seattle
Northern Pacific officials push trains through picket lines as rail unions and the ARU prepare for a showdown.
- The Lawyer Who Sold Out the Settlers
A local editorial exposes future President James Garfield’s role as a corporate attorney for the Northern Pacific Railroad, accusing him of betraying Washington Territory homesteaders to protect railroad land holdings.
- The Senate Ratifies the Treaties That Remade the Northwest
Ratified in 1859, the 1855 treaties with tribes across Oregon and Washington promised annuities, schools and mills while ceding millions of acres to settlement.
- The Mugwump’s Ledger: How Seattle’s Territorial Secretary Gamed the Law Printing Contract
A fierce editorial exposes Secretary Owings for delaying the publication of territorial laws to favor a cronies’ printing bid, while padding the bill with 40 pages of his own party platform.
- The Vanishing Mill: How Chicago Capital Was Driven Out of Vancouver by a City’s Defiant Stand
A Chicago millionaire’s plan to build a massive sawmill on an island in Vancouver, B.C., collapsed after local police and citizens physically evicted his workers. The fallout has sent the industrialist packing to Seattle, leaving behind political chaos and a debt of thousands to the Dominion government.
- The Tragic End of a Great Railroad Visionary
General Adas Anderson, the chief engineer who conquered the Cascades, takes his own life in a Seattle hotel room.
- The Man Who Thought He Owned Seattle Died Chasing a Ghost Fortune
Henry Zechow spent nine years and a small army of lawyers trying to claim an uncle's imaginary empire—including a block of downtown Seattle—before his body turned up in the Fraser River.
- The Ring of Corruption: How King County’s Auditor Hid the Books
A scathing editorial in the Puget Sound Dispatch exposes Gardner Kellogg for refusing to explain thousands of dollars in missing county funds, accusing him of treating public office as private property.
- The Ghosting of Yakima City
When the Northern Pacific Railroad bypassed the original town of Yakima City, they didn't just move the station—they forced the entire town to uproot itself.
- The Boss’s View on Coal, Labor, and Anti-Chinese Agitation
A rare 1885 look into the mind of the Oregon Improvement Company’s representative during a volatile era of Seattle’s labor history.
- The Seattle Post-Intelligencer vs. Aberdeen: A War of Words Over the Chinese Eviction
In November 1890, a fierce public feud erupted between Aberdeen and Seattle when the Seattle paper defended the city's recent expulsion of its Chinese residents, accusing Aberdeen of violence that never happened.
- The Postmaster Who Refused to Hire Women
An eighteen-year-old applicant details how she was misled and eventually dismissed by the Olympia postmaster due to her gender.
- The Tacoma Coal Strike: When Miners Turned on the Overseer
A labor dispute at the Pacific Coast's only coke works escalates into a siege of an office and mass arrests, highlighting the volatile tension between mine owners and workers in 1890s Washington.
- The Great Congressional Shutdown of 1876
A historic clash between the House and Senate left federal workers across the country—and the crew of a local Revenue Cutter—stranded without pay.
- The Smuggler's Shield: How a Seattle Customs Chief Defended Himself in Tacoma
In the height of the 1888 opium smuggling scandal, Chief Inspector Gardner takes the stand in Tacoma, claiming he was set up by political rivals to cover his own failures.
- 1878 Timber Land Act Opens 160-Acre Sales
A new federal law promises to open up public forests in Washington Territory to private ownership, setting the stage for decades of industrial exploitation.
- The Birth Pangs of Washington’s Constitution
As the territory prepared for statehood in 1889, the local press scrutinized the new constitution, exposing the tension between civic optimism and the looming shadow of corporate greed.
- The Fight for Control of the Sound
How local merchants and steamship operators are resisting monopolistic tactics in the Puget Sound trade.
- Seattle's Streetcar Franchise Fight: A City Council Asked to Extend a Struggling Railway's Lease
In 1896, the Seattle Consolidated Street Railway Company asked the city to extend its franchise to fifty years and share gross returns, arguing that a mandated paving bill would otherwise bankrupt the line.
- Seattle Shut Every School for Scarlet Fever
With 53 cases and a council fight over authority, Seattle's health board ordered public, private and Sunday schools closed in May 1895.
- S.S. Astorian Sinks in Puget Sound Fog
A collision with a Union Oil barge results in the loss of a vessel carrying cargo from the San Juan Islands.
Also about this, in other words
- The Chief's Daughter in the Shadow of the City Named for Her Father
A San Francisco Chronicle correspondent visits Princess Angeline in her Seattle shack and finds the city proudly carving her father's face on a new business block while his daughter lives on charity.
- A Chief's Remains and a Fourth of July at Leschi's Old Camp
Puyallup, Muckleshoot and valley tribes planned a July gathering to disinter a Nisqually chief and rebury him at the site of Leschi's old camp.
- A Cold Case Reopened in the Shadows of Lake Washington
Two men have been transported through Tacoma to face trial for a two-year-old murder, allegedly sparked by a debt between peddlers.