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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1876 | 5 |
| 1877 | 3 |
| 1878 | 1 |
| 1882 | 1 |
| 1883 | 1 |
| 1884 | 1 |
| 1885 | 1 |
| 1888 | 1 |
| 1891 | 2 |
| 1892 | 1 |
| 1893 | 2 |
| 1894 | 2 |
| 1895 | 10 |
| 1898 | 1 |
| 1903 | 1 |
| 1908 | 1 |
| 1909 | 3 |
| 1911 | 1 |
| 1914 | 1 |
| 1916 | 1 |
40 stories matching impetus
- Seattle Rebuilds: Schwabacher Block, Arlington Hotel Lead Construction Surge
Architects unveil plans for new commercial blocks, a school, and hospital expansions as Seattle enters a building frenzy.
- The Tragedy at the Soap Factory
A local businessman meets a horrific end after falling into a vat of boiling grease.
- A $10,000 Railroad Check and a Whispering Campaign in Olympia
In 1895, Washington's legislature gathered to choose a U.S. senator, and the Seattle press heard that the Southern Pacific had put $10,000 behind one candidate.
- The $7 Million Gamble to Dig Seattle’s Canal
St. Louis capitalists arrive with plans for the Lake Washington canal and tide-flat fill, promising a transformed city—if Seattle secures the rights-of-way.
- The Millionaire’s Gamble: Ryan & McDonald Awarded the $3M Rail Contract
New York contractors secure the massive deal to connect Seattle and Spokane Falls in just two years, promising to unlock Eastern Washington's grain and timber wealth.
- The Rise and Lonely Fall of Spokane's Richest Man
Banker Anthony M. Cannon, who helped build Spokane from a cabin by the falls, dies broke and bereaved in a New York hotel — days after a secret second marriage made him tabloid prey.
- The 'Seattle Way' of Building a Railroad
By shunning outside capital and high-salaried officers, local boosters claim they are carving a path through the Cascades using nothing but 'Seattle money and pluck.'
- The Railroad Gamble
In an 1878 editorial, the Seattle Weekly Dispatch argues that the economic survival of the region depends on using Chinese labor to build the Seattle and Walla Walla Railroad, claiming that white capital refuses to invest unless labor costs are kept low.
- The Vampire of Hard Times: Why Seattle's Banks Are Starving Its Growth
An editorial in the March 1877 *Seattle Intelligencer* blames the region’s economic stagnation not on a lack of enterprise, but on predatory lending rates that are strangling local industry.
- The Struggle for a Proper Stage
A popular movement takes off to build Seattle its first dedicated grand opera house as performers complain about the city’s cramped, inadequate venues.
- A Monorail on a 'Bicycle System': The 1892 Plan to Ride One Rail from Seattle to Tacoma
A company promised a thirty-mile elevated railway — cars balanced on a single steel rail, steadied by rubber wheels on an overhead guide — running across the tide flats and reaching Tacoma in forty minutes.
- The Variety Palace That Became a Business Block
John Cort's Standard Theater, where rival bands paraded in Pioneer Place and 'box rustlers' rode through the streets, is being remodeled into ordinary commercial space at South Second and Washington.
- The Great Jam: Seattle’s Gamble on Clearing the Skagit River
As a massive log jam threatens to stall trade in the fertile Skagit Valley, enterprising locals are betting their fortunes on a dangerous engineering feat to open the river for commerce.
- A Road, a Railroad and a 10x10 Schoolhouse: Into the Wilds of Clallam County
S. W. Clark returns from the far western corner of the Olympic Peninsula with tales of rich soil, bachelors' cabins, Indian-canoe supply lines and a weekly paper published in the forest.
- State Cracks Down on Butchers Doctoring Hamburger
Washington's Pure Food Commission has won convictions and fines against Seattle butchers who treated putrid meat scraps with chemicals, and more prosecutions are coming.
- Seattle Raises $500,000 for the South Canal While Ballard Dreams of Steel
In hard times, Seattle subscribers oversubscribe a half-million-dollar canal subsidy, with surveyors on the government route and D. H. Gilman's steel works and car shops said to be materializing across the bay.
- The Plan to Ring Puget Sound With Forts—and Put Big Guns on Magnolia Bluff
A federal fortification scheme would turn Magnolia Bluff, Admiralty Inlet and Marrowstone Point into a defensive ring around the new Port Orchard navy yard—if Congress paid for it.
- The Road Less Traveled: Seattle’s Shameful Contrast with Victoria’s Fine Highways
In 1876, the local press lambasted King County’s broken road system, praising British Columbia’s turnpikes as a model for Seattle’s own stagnant development.
- The Riverfront Factory Boom
New manufacturing operations along the Snohomish River signal a growing industrial future for the region.
- Camp Kelpie: A Seattle Hunting Party in the Last Great Bear Country
In 1895, Seattle sportsmen pitched camp on Hood Canal between the Duckabush and Hamma Hamma rivers and found a wilderness thick with black bear, salmon, and one very unlucky tenderfoot.
- The Settlement of the Indemnity Strip
After years of uncertainty, the federal government confirms Northern Pacific railroad land grants, ending a volatile era for local settlers.
- The Great State Division Debate
Following the 1914 prohibition vote, some Seattle elites proposed splitting Washington into two states to escape the dry laws of the east side.
- Everett Eyes the 'Commission Plan' for City Government
Following a lecture by a Spokane commissioner, Everett citizens push to abandon ward politics in favor of a new municipal structure.
- Passing of a Newcastle Coal Pioneer
P. H. Lewis, who arrived in Seattle in 1852 and struck it rich in the coal fields, has died at his Seneca Street home.
- A Stern-Wheeler for the Pend d'Oreille: Newport Bets on the Metaline Trade
Seven thousand dollars subscribed, a hundred-foot boat drawing two feet of water, and a captain promising to be running ore to Newport by June 1.
Also about this, in other words
- Seattle Pastor Warns of Anarchy and Labor Unrest in 1893 Sermon
Rev. Dr. D. C. Garrett told St. Mark's Episcopal congregation that labor troubles stem from a failure to render unto God and Caesar.
- The Snohomish Pulpit and the 'Spirit of Indifference'
A local sermon challenges the congregation to stop treating religion as mere entertainment and instead fight for their beliefs in an era of rapid scientific change.
- Worker Critically Injured in Blasting Accident
A laborer working on the Maple Valley extension of the Columbia & Puget Sound railway was struck by a jagged wooden splinter after a stump blast, leaving him in a life-threatening condition.
- A Seattle Sermon Asks Capital and Labor to Read Scripture Together
At St. Mark's Church, Rev. D. C. Garrett blames class friction on a Christianity forgotten by rich and poor alike—and imagines employers and grievance committees studying Paul side by side.
- The Price of Progress: A Victim of the Storm
A devastating windstorm hits Olympia, leaving a man critically injured and highlighting the physical perils of frontier expansion.
- The Emergency Brake of 1892
A clever new mechanism for Seattle's Woodland Park streetcar line promised to stop a runaway trolley car within its own length.
- The Minister’s Holy Kick
A traveling preacher pulls a fast one on a highwayman in this classic piece of frontier satire.
- The Pulpit vs. The Ring
Dr. S. Alonzo Bright uses a sermon on the 'Demoniac' to launch a stinging public rebuke against corrupt city politicians.