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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1854 | 2 |
| 1861 | 1 |
| 1862 | 1 |
| 1864 | 2 |
| 1872 | 2 |
| 1876 | 8 |
| 1877 | 8 |
| 1878 | 8 |
| 1880 | 3 |
| 1883 | 4 |
| 1884 | 1 |
| 1885 | 4 |
| 1887 | 6 |
| 1888 | 3 |
| 1889 | 13 |
| 1890 | 1 |
| 1891 | 18 |
| 1892 | 24 |
| 1893 | 14 |
| 1894 | 17 |
| 1895 | 26 |
| 1897 | 3 |
| 1898 | 1 |
| 1899 | 2 |
| 1902 | 2 |
| 1903 | 4 |
| 1904 | 5 |
| 1909 | 10 |
| 1911 | 3 |
| 1912 | 1 |
| 1914 | 2 |
| 1915 | 2 |
| 1916 | 6 |
| 1922 | 1 |
| 1923 | 1 |
209 stories matching merit
- Billy Fife: Self-Taught Caricaturist of Frontier Seattle
A biography of Billy Fife, a sailor and self-taught caricaturist whose sharp wit and rare artistic skill captured Seattle's frontier life.
- The Editor, the Chief, and the Libel He Could Not Prove
Seattle’s police chief wins a criminal libel case after the Telegraph’s promised corruption evidence never materializes.
- The Great Tree Planting Contest: Who Knows How to Grow a Forest in Seattle?
A local committee has rejected the first round of submissions for a $150 prize on orchard design, declaring them insufficient. Now, they are asking the public to try again with a more rigorous plan for planting 30 acres of fruit trees.
- The Gall and Wormwood of Olympia: Tacoma’s Defeat in the Senate Race
As Washington's first U.S. Senator is chosen in a bitter legislative battle, defeated candidate Calkins' supporters cry foul, while Jefferson County delegates secure the victory for Watson Squire.
- The Great 'Chautauqua' Debate
After weeks of indecision, a committee chooses Point Defiance for a massive cultural assembly site, highlighting the rapid civic growth and ambition of the Puget Sound region.
- The Mining Promoter Who Told Would-Be Miners to Stay Home
Col. W. Thomas Hart has bonded claims and cut a trail in the new Slate Creek district, but he begs the press not to inflate the strike: there is no work, no mill, and too much snow for prospecting.
- The Man Who Said He Spoke for the Czar
A smooth-talking stranger blew into Tacoma claiming to be the Russian government's agent in a Siberian railway steamship scheme — then turned out to be tangled up in the intrigue surrounding the state capitol commission.
- The Port of Tacoma's Race for Global Trade
James J. Hill’s new steamship fleet creates a fierce rivalry between Tacoma and Seattle to secure the role of primary Pacific Northwest shipping hub.
- How Washington Territory's Public Printing Became a Corrupt Political Perk
A Seattle editor rails against the patronage and fraud in the territory's printing contracts, revealing that one printer paid Secretary Smith $2,000 for the appointment.
- A City Fed Up: Seattle Demands an End to the Fire Department Follies
Six years after the Great Fire, an exasperated editor says the wrangling over the fire department has become a farce — and warns the mayor, council and commission to settle it or step aside.
- The Unreliable Peer: A Seattle Critique of Jury Bias
An 1878 editorial laments that the 'glory of English law' is being tarnished by jurors who prioritize class bias over evidence.
- The Struggle for the Kennewick-Richland Marketing Union
Local growers navigate competing marketing strategies to establish a unified system for fruit distribution.
- The City Can Tear It Down: The Supreme Court Backs Seattle's Fire Limits
Daniel K. Baxter put up a twenty-foot shell of wooden posts wrapped in corrugated iron inside Seattle's fire limits. The state Supreme Court said the city could knock it down without ever going to court — and municipal building codes came out of it stronger than before.
- Spokane Falls Fires Back at the Boom-Sayers
A Walla Walla society paper printed a traveler's claim that Spokane Falls was a real-estate humbug at its zenith. The Falls' editor answered with population figures, water power, and an invitation to tour the new bridge.
- The Puget Sound Smuggling Ring Scandal
A government inspector uncovers a vast operation allegedly smuggling Chinese migrants and opium into the Pacific Northwest, implicating customs officials and steamship lines.
- The Day Seattle Suffrage Died
A technical legal oversight by the Territorial Legislature has stripped women of their right to vote and serve on juries.
- U.S. Supreme Court Rules Against Private Tide Land Claims
A landmark decision solidifies the state's control over waterfront property, ending years of speculation via 'Valentine scrip'.
- The Dawn of Political Equality
Washington Territory grants women the right to vote, marking a landmark triumph for human rights.
- The Scab Who Spoke Out: A Newcastle Miner’s Defense Against the 'Ring'
In a fiery letter to the editor, a coal miner defends his decision to cross the picket line during a violent strike, accusing union leaders of forming a tyrannical ring and replacing loyal workers with non-union laborers.
- The Cedar River Siege: How a Power Mogul Tried to Steal Seattle’s Water
Seattle Star exposes the Snoqualmie Falls Power Company’s dirty game: using fake environmental panic to block municipal water rights and crush competition.
- One Day Late: The Veto That May Hang a Man
A clerk's date stamp, a messenger who cannot recall which day he ran an errand, and a condemned Italian at Tacoma whose last chance at a new appeal may have expired in the paperwork.
- The Judge Who Warned Seattle Not to Sell Its Waterfront to a Canal Company
In 1894, Judge John J. McGilvra urged Congress to build the Lake Washington Ship Canal and warned that a private company's tideflat scheme would put tolls on the water and enrich speculators at public expense.
- The Fight Over Who Can Vote: Half-Breeds and the 1854 Legislature
A heated debate erupts in the Council over whether 'half-breeds' should be granted the elective franchise, revealing deep tensions over literacy, race, and colonial control.
- Sailors Accuse Waterfront ‘Crimpers’ of Kidnapping and Beatings
The local Sailors’ Union demands an inquiry into boarding-house masters accused of holding men aboard ships at gunpoint and beating them into submission.
- The Great Seattle Homestead Fraud
A whistleblower exposes how workers were swindled out of their hard-earned money by a predatory land development scheme.
Also about this, in other words
- The Intellectual Meritocracy of the East
In an era of intense anti-Chinese sentiment in the West, a Snohomish lecturer finds a startling, counter-intuitive argument for the superiority of Chinese governance: a rigorous, education-based civil service.
- The Case for Naming an Olympia Street After Judge Hewitt
A memorial sermon for a territorial judge becomes a plea to carve his name into Olympia's street map—and a meditation on what makes a public life worth remembering.
- The Redemption of a Public Servant
A young man sheds a life of idle indulgence to find purpose as a prosecutor, sparking a debate over the value of public integrity in the Washington Territory.
- The Power of Education at the University
A local minister delivers a sermon to graduates, arguing that knowledge and moral discipline are the foundations of both the individual and the republic.
- Sportsmanship Over Scores
Kennewick High School honors basketball players not for their victories, but for their conduct in the face of difficult circumstances.
- The Housewife's Rebellion
In an era of performative domesticity, one young woman in Washington Territory insists that 'accomplishment' means knowing how to run a household from the kitchen up.
- The Spoils System Must Go
In an 1880 letter of acceptance, a presidential candidate lays out a radical vision to dismantle political patronage and return to a government based on merit rather than party service.
- The Forgotten Stakeholders of the Rails
In an 1877 labor manifesto, Wendell Phillips argues that capital has failed the American worker and that mutual committees are the only path to economic peace.