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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1859 | 1 |
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| 1877 | 7 |
| 1878 | 16 |
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322 stories matching happi
- The Bogus 'Happy Valley' Real Estate Scam
A swindler in Fairhaven has been selling plots in a 'Happy Valley' addition that exists only on paper and a mountain.
- Seattle’s Post-Panic Pep Talk: Canals, Steel and Paved Streets
On New Year’s Day 1895, Seattle’s mayor and aldermen promised economy, railroad terminals and a Lake Washington canal—and insisted the Panic of 1893 was finally fading.
- The Great Heartbreak: A Local Girl’s Secret Wedding to a Seattle Stranger
When Miss Mary Ann Farmer married Mr. J.G. York in Snohomish, the town was left reeling—not just by the news, but by the sudden silence of their local bachelors who had been courting her.
- The Comedian’s Shadow
A veteran actor watches from the wings as his son eclipses his own fading career on the Seattle stage.
- A Wedding on the Skagit Flats
A frontier celebration in the late 1870s brings together four river communities for a night of dancing and revelry.
- The Gold Rush That Never Was: Walla Walla’s Delusion of Wealth
In January 1889, a local paper in Walla Walla, Washington, published an ecstatic report claiming the city was awash in gold dust and twenty-dollar pieces, comparing its prosperity to the heyday of the Salmon River mines. It was a stark contrast to the reality of a region still recovering from economic busts.
- The Day Washington Was Born: A City Holds Its Breath
As the nation celebrates statehood, Seattle gathers in a packed hall to hear speeches on liberty, land fraud, and the future of the 'Queen City.'
- Stolen at Six, He Waited Seventeen Years to Ask a Policeman for His Mother's Address
A quiet hospital steward in Seattle writes to New York's famous Inspector Byrnes and signs a name nobody in this city had ever heard him use.
- Fifteen Minutes to Confess: The Morphine Trial of Port Townsend's Captain De Lion
A former mayor, Chilean consul and dry-dock promoter worth half a million dollars sits in superior court while his emaciated wife describes a year of morphine, delusion and a pocket watch set on the table between them.
- Seattle’s 1895 Co-op Where 150 Unemployed Men Ate for 7 Cents a Day
At a Belltown barracks, unemployed single men pooled their wages, submitted to military-style rules and fed an average of 150 people daily for about 7 cents each.
- The First Wedding in Seattle, Celebrated Forty-Two Years Later
David and Louisa Denny gather four generations of pioneers at their Temperance Street home, where relics of the 1850s—and the certificate from Seattle’s first marriage—turn an anniversary into a founding story.
- She Sued Him for $10,000—Then Married Him Before Trial
A long-running Woodinville breach-of-promise case collapsed when a minister, a widow and a reluctant bachelor slipped out of the courthouse and came back married.
- The Horror in Happy Valley
A husband confesses to murdering his wife and burying her remains under the roots of a stump, only to be discovered months later after tending to the site.
- A Montana Millionaire's Secret Seattle Wedding
Hugh F. Galen, a wealthy Helena mine owner and politician, secretly married schoolteacher Laura B. Tague at a Seattle church, then slipped away to California—leaving friends in Montana to plan a reception.
- The Keeley Cure Comes to Olympia
Olympia's Keeley Institute promises release from drink, and the Tribune opens a discreet charity fund for patients who cannot pay.
- The Bachelors of Teanaway
A desperate group of Kittitas valley bachelors place a bizarre ad in a local paper, hoping to lure women to their remote ranches.
- A Coal Mine Explosion Reunites a Divorced Couple
After a bitter divorce and years of estrangement, a near-fatal mining accident brings an elderly couple back together.
- The Lake Keeps Its Secret: A Tragedy of Adultery in Wenatchee
A local man and a married woman drown together on the lake; while her body is recovered, he remains lost to the depths, serving as a grim moral lesson for the community.
- The Romantic Ruin of a Seattle Dreamer
A young woman in 1878 Seattle finds her intellectual ambitions derailed by a fleeting, unequal affair with a local 'villain.'
- The Unbeatable Fence of Old Town
A standoff between property owners and the city government plays out on an obstructed public thoroughfare, mirroring the modern tensions of land access in a growing metropolis.
- The Electric Gate: An Olympia Father Declares War on Front-Gate Courting
A gadget-minded Eastside householder wires his front gate to deliver a jolt to lally-gagging sweethearts — and proves it first on an unwitting dog and a cabbage-loving cow.
- Two Lost Hunters Stayed Alive for Two Days Without Food or Fire Near Sullivan Lake
Fred Douglass and a companion wandered off the deer trail, soaked their matches, and survived by walking until they stumbled onto a miners' cabin at Happy Camp.
- The Valley Sixty Miles From a Railroad
In 1892, the Big Bottom settlers of Lewis County had no road, no sawmill and no rail line — just hand-hewn homes, packhorses, a tobacco-chewing cat, and a Fourth of July party for 160 neighbors.
- The Steel Divorce Trial: Infidelity, Money, and a Son in the Middle
A Seattle courtroom heard a wife's case for divorce and a husband's claim that an interloper wrecked a hard-won fortune.
- The Fractured Philosophy of Josua Klein
Once a confident leader of a 'radio-active philosophy' retreat, Josua Klein sits in a Tacoma jail cell, broken and waiting for deportation.
Also about this, in other words
- A Noisy Surprise for the Newlyweds
Local residents revive the old-fashioned 'charivari' tradition to celebrate a neighbor’s recent marriage with a cacophonous midnight parade.