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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1854 | 1 |
| 1858 | 3 |
| 1860 | 1 |
| 1861 | 2 |
| 1862 | 2 |
| 1864 | 2 |
| 1872 | 4 |
| 1876 | 34 |
| 1877 | 20 |
| 1878 | 9 |
| 1879 | 1 |
| 1880 | 3 |
| 1882 | 5 |
| 1883 | 38 |
| 1884 | 9 |
| 1885 | 32 |
| 1886 | 15 |
| 1887 | 17 |
| 1888 | 19 |
| 1889 | 45 |
| 1890 | 10 |
| 1891 | 40 |
| 1892 | 82 |
| 1893 | 48 |
| 1894 | 62 |
| 1895 | 91 |
| 1896 | 1 |
| 1898 | 8 |
| 1899 | 18 |
| 1900 | 3 |
| 1903 | 26 |
| 1904 | 19 |
| 1905 | 3 |
| 1907 | 2 |
| 1908 | 17 |
| 1909 | 41 |
| 1910 | 6 |
| 1911 | 1 |
| 1912 | 2 |
| 1914 | 4 |
| 1915 | 4 |
| 1916 | 11 |
| 1917 | 7 |
| 1923 | 2 |
| 1925 | 1 |
771 stories matching lay
- The Ram's Horn: When Seattle Went to War With a Railroad Over Six Blocks of Public Street
Boxed in by an injunction, Corporation Counsel Donworth finds a lawyer's loophole: let the Columbia & Puget Sound Railroad lay its rails, but serve notice that the city denies the right-of-way exists at all.
- Who Owns the Water? Marcus Grants 25-Year Private Franchise
Stevens County commissioners hand a sweeping water system monopoly to a group of investors, with a two-year deadline to build or lose the right.
- A Funeral Crowd Calls for a Killer's Neck
Thousands filed past the bodies of Philipina Miller and her child as Seattle police rushed the accused murderer to the county jail to stop a lynching.
- The Murder in the Bunkhouse North of Auburn
A young Japanese labor contractor was beaten and killed as he slept in a cabin on J.W. Nails's farm; a roommate was jailed while blood trails, a loaded musket and an opium pipe deepened the mystery.
- The Man Who Lost His Mind to a Will: A Snohomish Tragedy
A wealthy local man, stricken with paralysis after a legal dispute over his inheritance, is now confined in the Washington Asylum for the Insane. His family’s fortune may have cost him his sanity.
- A Christmas on the Ice King: The Climb That Saw Rainier Smoking
In 1894, Major Ingraham led six men, seven homing pigeons, and a camera onto Mount Rainier’s glaciers. They came back with frostbite, a story of steam and smoke rising from the crater—and one pigeon missing.
- A 25-Year Grip on Ione’s Water
Over a rival’s protest, Stevens County commissioners handed the Ione Water & Light Co. a quarter-century franchise to lay water mains through town—with a clause letting Ione buy the system out if it ever incorporated.
- Thirty-Seven Miners Died 150 Feet From Safety
An 1894 coroner's jury in Franklin, Washington, heard how a small fire in the Oregon Improvement Company's coal mine became a wall of smoke — and why the men who could have escaped stayed to fight it.
- The Battle for the Waterfront
Tacoma and Seattle clash with the state over who owns the land between the high tide line and the harbor.
- The City Lays the Foundation for its Future
On the Fourth of July, 1894, Seattle gathered between Lake Union and Lake Washington to lay the cornerstone of the University of Washington's new main building.
- The City Council Grants Massive Streetcar Monopoly
A sweeping new ordinance grants a local transit company the right to lay tracks across vast swaths of Seattle's downtown, prioritizing private infrastructure over the city's future growth.
- A Father's Vengeance: The Killing of the Muckleshoot Medicine Man
When three of Jerry Domnick's children died under Jim Bouchitt's care, the grieving father took a rifle into the woods — and the healer was found buried under a log near Soos Creek.
- The Open River Was Supposed to Pay Dividends. Was Anyone Counting?
A year after the Celilo Canal opened, the Courier-Reporter asked whether the Inland Empire would actually use the river—and bragged that Kennewick was already the Columbia’s busiest freight town this side of Celilo.
- The Temple of Thought: Snohomish Builds Its Own Athenaeum
A visiting orator declares the new Snohomish Athenaeum a 'temple of science, literature, and art,' rising from the wilderness to preserve the intellectual legacy of the Pacific Northwest.
- The Miracle at the Bend
An engineer’s harrowing account of a toddler playing on the tracks, the desperate silence of the brakes, and an inexplicable survival.
- Seattle's Irish Community Crowns Robert Emmet—and Calls for Home Rule
In 1895, the Irish-American Club packed Ranke's Hall to honor the martyred patriot with speeches, songs, and a ringing demand for an Irish parliament.
- No Monopoly on Gaslight: Spokane's Council Draws a Line
Council granted a gas company the right to lay pipes—but pointedly refused an exclusive franchise, warning that monopoly would 'cinch the consumers.'
- The Westside Streetcar Line Starts Grading Toward Harrison Avenue
Olympia's new Westside Railway begins cutting a street approach and prepares to lay rails across the Port Townsend Southern tracks.
- The Unlucky Fisherman of Seattle
A satirical poem from 1878 chronicles an angler who spends a week sitting by a local sawmill, only to become a living piece of landscape architecture for the local insect population.
- The Franklin Mine Fire: Thirty-Seven Dead, Not a Scratch on Them
A fire in breast sixty-two traps miners between flame and return airway; bodies are laid in rows as Seattle sends a special train.
- 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.
- The Marshal’s Club: A Vagrant’s Death on the Falmouth Harbor
When a Whatcom city marshal struck a drunk vagrant with his billy club, the man died. Now, a furious letter found under the body demands justice in Seattle.
- The Iron City That Never Was: Kirkland’s $3 Million Bet on Steel
In 1891, promoters promised to turn the shores of Lake Washington into the 'Pittsburgh of the Pacific,' selling lots for a fortune and laying tracks for a empire that would vanish within a decade.
- The Abandoned Infant on Third Street
An April Fool's Day prank turns somber when a prominent Seattle real estate developer finds a newborn left on his doorstep.
- The Verdict Was Thrown Out. Now Wilcox Faces a Second Fight for His Life.
William A. Wilcox, once convicted of manslaughter in the 1893 slaying of Charlotte Fetting, will be retried in Seattle. Both prosecution and defense claim new evidence — and the defense says the real killers are still at large.
Also about this, in other words
- A Final Return to Lynden
The local Grange and community mourn the passing of John J. Lay, who returned home to be laid to rest.
- The Abandonment of Ong Let
A Chinese domestic servant faces death alone in the hospital after his community fund dries up and authorities offer no help.
- The Rag, the Belt and the Flywheel: A Laundry Hand's Bad Monday
Ray Strong was wiping an engine belt he had no business touching when the cloth whipped him into a spinning flywheel. He was alive, unconscious at times, and the whole town was counting on his 'strong vitality.'
- The Disappearing Lay Reader of Tacoma
A Minnesota man and church treasurer leaves his bride and his creditors behind in a cloud of financial scandal.
- The Clerk’s Odd Sales Pitch
A farmer learns a strange and aggressive new way to test if his wife is 'sound' while shopping in 1877 Seattle.
- The Ink Bottle Defense: A Wenatchee Judge Rules That a Well-Aimed Throw Can Keep the Peace
A hotel owner who hit a Seattle man for cursing in front of women was cleared—the court decided he was preserving public order, not disturbing it.
- There's "Dough" in Every Street Contract: A Preacher Takes On City Hall
Rev. Napoleon Hoagland reads the nation's municipal record aloud — reeking streets, a million-dollar franchise given away, councilmen who elsewhere would count themselves lucky to stay out of prison — and asks why democratic America breeds more thieves than the Tsar's Europe.
- The Bakery Betrayal
A local baker is swindled out of his life savings in a classic confidence game at the edge of Wright Park.