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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1854 | 1 |
| 1861 | 3 |
| 1862 | 1 |
| 1863 | 1 |
| 1872 | 1 |
| 1876 | 17 |
| 1877 | 10 |
| 1878 | 1 |
| 1880 | 5 |
| 1882 | 4 |
| 1883 | 8 |
| 1884 | 9 |
| 1885 | 12 |
| 1886 | 12 |
| 1887 | 7 |
| 1888 | 8 |
| 1889 | 11 |
| 1890 | 2 |
| 1891 | 16 |
| 1892 | 43 |
| 1893 | 33 |
| 1894 | 26 |
| 1895 | 38 |
| 1897 | 1 |
| 1898 | 1 |
| 1899 | 11 |
| 1900 | 1 |
| 1903 | 8 |
| 1904 | 7 |
| 1907 | 1 |
| 1908 | 7 |
| 1909 | 17 |
| 1910 | 2 |
| 1911 | 2 |
| 1914 | 1 |
| 1915 | 5 |
| 1916 | 2 |
| 1917 | 3 |
| 1918 | 1 |
339 stories matching float
- McNeil Island Residents to Get New Ferry Float
County commissioners force construction after government restricts access to the penitentiary's private ferry service.
- 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.
- A Family on a Float, a Dead Baby, and a Neighbor's Kindness
When the Gore family was found feverish and destitute aboard a float at the foot of Franklin Street, Olympia's charity could not save their youngest child—but it did not abandon them.
- The Peril of Floating Streets
As Seattle's waterfront development grew in 1876, the street commissioner sounded an alarm over the city's vulnerable, buoyant wooden pavements.
- Fatal Fall at Manning's Wharf
A young laborer dies after a forty-foot fall on a piledriver at the Seattle waterfront.
- Floating Fishery Boosts Local Economy
A new floating station for Grays Harbor fishermen aims to make Aberdeen a central hub for the industry, potentially rivaling a lumber mill in economic value.
- The River Run: A Log Drive Threatens Local Fishing
Three hundred cords of wood floated down the south fork of the Walla Walla River are expected to wreck the local fishing season for weeks.
- The Great Land Grab of 1886
A legal dispute over Northern Pacific Railroad land grants highlights the struggle between territorial settlers and the encroaching influence of transcontinental rail monopolies.
- 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.
- Found Destitute on a Float at the Foot of Franklin Street
Fever takes an infant on Sunday and the mother on Monday, and a subscription pays for the burial.
- The Waterfront 'Hotbed of Disorder'
In 1887, Seattle officials and citizens mobilized to purge the city's waterfront of the 'notorious' floating houses that provided a refuge for the city's poorest residents.
- The Ghostly Search for a Lost Sailor
When a sailor drowned at the mouth of the Columbia River in 1876, his grieving colleagues turned to a grim folk remedy to recover his body.
- Tacoma's Rose Carnival Floats Dazzle Thousands
A floral procession of 'fairest daughters' and decorated chariots marched through downtown Tacoma to honor the Queen of the Carnival.
- 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.
- Trapped by the Skagit River's Winter Fury
An eyewitness account from January 1885 describes the deadly isolation of the Skagit Valley as the river choked with ice, cutting off pioneer settlers from the outside world.
- 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.
- Icy Rescue on the Columbia River
Two men survived a harrowing five-hour drift in freezing temperatures after their scow broke loose near Stevenson.
- 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.'
- 1,200 Cattle Bound for the Yukon Gold Camps
A Seattle-led expedition planned to drive a thousand head over the Dalton Trail and float them down the Yukon, with the herd fattening in the Wenas Valley before the journey.
- 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.