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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1862 | 1 |
| 1872 | 6 |
| 1876 | 42 |
| 1877 | 29 |
| 1878 | 11 |
| 1879 | 1 |
| 1880 | 18 |
| 1882 | 8 |
| 1883 | 31 |
| 1884 | 16 |
| 1885 | 35 |
| 1886 | 16 |
| 1887 | 18 |
| 1888 | 16 |
| 1889 | 50 |
| 1891 | 11 |
| 1892 | 60 |
| 1893 | 69 |
| 1894 | 100 |
| 1895 | 102 |
| 1898 | 3 |
| 1899 | 18 |
| 1902 | 1 |
| 1903 | 8 |
| 1904 | 2 |
| 1915 | 1 |
| 1916 | 1 |
| 1928 | 3 |
| 1929 | 1 |
678 stories matching hard
- The Day Seattle Shut Down: Sailors, Longshoremen and the First Labor Day
Banks, courts and public offices closed for the first time in the city's history, 2,500 people packed Pioneer Place for a 36-minute tug-of-war, and a labor orator told the crowd that good wages are the engine of everyone's prosperity.
- The Mayor Who Wanted to be an Autocrat
Mayor Ronald’s fascination with authoritarian rule leads to a public firing during a police board meeting.
- The Struggle Over a Mother’s Custody
A local children's bureau official defends the controversial intervention into a family's life in the face of public criticism.
- The Engineer’s Ash-Box Ghost: A Tale of New Year’s Eve Peril
In a column dated October 1870, the Seattle Daily Intelligencer reprints a harrowing tale from an old engineer about surviving a wreck by hiding under his locomotive's ash pan during a blizzard.
- 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.
- Seattle Loses by Half a Length—and Wins the Lake
In August 1894, Seattle's first amateur regatta drew crowds to the Madison Street shore of Lake Washington for a four-oared thriller against Portland and Burrard Inlet. The home crew lost by less than half a length, but set a course record and gave the young city a new civic stage.
- The Great Seattle 'Hard Times' of 1885
As local businesses scrambled to collect debts and residents bartered farm goods for services, Seattle residents looked at the nation’s economic slump and wondered if they could weather the storm.
- The Dug-Eaters of the Yukon: A Philadelphia Man’s Starvation Story
H.C. Reifsnyder arrives in Seattle with a harrowing tale of survival on the Edmonton Trail, where his party subsisted on dog meat and dugouts after losing their provisions to the brutal wilderness.
- A Chinese Student's 1929 Speech Named the Racism Washington Tried to Forget
At the University of Washington's Cosmopolitan Club, Wesley Kai Hwa Kwang catalogued a century of anti-Chinese violence — including the 1885 killings in Squak Valley and the burning of Tacoma's Chinatown — and asked a white audience to account for it.
- The Tragic Cost of the Miner's Den
In a remote mining camp, a man’s hard-earned savings and life are lost in a sudden, violent encounter with card sharps.
- A Chinese Merchant Lost His Store. The Judge Said He Still Had Rights.
When hard times turned Chin Chew Coy from shopkeeper to laborer, federal officials moved to deport him. Judge Hanford ruled that his treaty rights—and his Portland property—still protected him.
- How Seattle Raised $50,000 for Its Canal — Bootblacks Included
A San Francisco paper marveled that Seattle's Lake Washington canal fund came in small donations from rich and poor alike, a civic-spirit story with a Puget Sound lesson.
- The Criminalization of Unemployment
A Seattle candy maker, down on his luck during hard times, faces repeated arrest for the 'crime' of being unable to find work.
- 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.
- 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.
- 'God Almighty Himself': Two Seattle Cops Suspended for Losing Their Tempers
The police board spends an evening on profanity, hurt feelings and a sergeant called 'crazy' — and warns the whole force that bad manners now carry a thirty-day price.
- Republicans Drum a Populist Out of the Nest
A mistaken delegate from Star Lake is unanimously expelled from the King County Republican committee before the state convention.
- Seattle's Chief Woolery Gives the 'Hard Cases' a Meal and a One-Way Boat
Meeting every steamer from up the Sound, the police chief spots known troublemakers, feeds them, and tells them when the next boat leaves—then finds a valise of safecracking tools and giant-powder cartridges.
- Seattle's Nonpareils Outplay Tacoma in a Thrilling Baseball Match
The junior champions of the Northwest dominated Tacoma with professional teamwork and acrobatic fielding, thrilling a crowd at Madison Street ball park.
- The Fight for Statehood: A 1882 Pitch for Washington’s Future
Before Washington was a state, its Congressional delegate fought a 'hard fight' to convince Washington D.C. that the territory was ready to join the Union.
- Seattle's Sewers Were Cracking All Over Town — and the City Engineer Blamed the Dirt
A furious letter writer insists the pipes broke not from 'percussion' but from the very worst kind of trench work — and points the finger straight at the man in charge.
- Broke at the End of Every Cannery Season: A Filipino Columnist's Plea for a Savings System
Writing for Seattle's Filipino community in 1928, Macario C. Rebodos traces the hard cycle of Alaskan cannery work and agricultural harvests — money earned, money spent, and pawnshops waiting at the end of it — and argues that an endowment policy is the only discipline that will break it.
- The Miracle Doctor of Pine Street: How One Man’s ‘New Science’ Tamed Seattle’s Sickness
In the winter of 1890, Dr. J. Eugene Jordan’s 'Histogenetic' remedies were curing everything from scrofula to neuralgia, drawing testimonies from desperate locals who claimed conventional medicine had failed them.
- The Hidden Dens of 1870s Seattle
A citizen appeal from 1872 exposes how unchecked public gambling was eroding the moral and financial fabric of the developing waterfront town.
- The Hoarding of Wealth in 1885 Seattle
While storehouses and granaries overflow, a letter to the editor questions why the economy stays starved of currency.
Also about this, in other words
- The 'Hard Times' of 1888: A City in Stagnation
As Seattle families struggle with unemployment and the high cost of living, the local press captures a city gripped by a financial slump.
- The Hard Sell at the Church Social
A bashful young man finds himself trapped at a church fair, unable to escape the relentless solicitation of two persistent young women.
- Judge Bell’s Hard Line on City Crime
A Seattle judge hands down stiff prison sentences for robbery to deter the criminal element in the city.
- The Hard Times Ball
Seattle's elite staged an 'economical' dance party to navigate the financial strain of 1893.