Research the archive
Narrow 25,688 newspaper stories by words, years, place, newspaper and subject. See when and where they ran, then download what you find.
Put a phrase in quotes ("rent strike") or leave a word out with a minus (strike -baseball). Old scans misspell names, so when little is found, near-spellings are offered.
Refine1 on
Show the numbers
| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1872 | 4 |
| 1876 | 81 |
| 1877 | 43 |
| 1878 | 18 |
| 1879 | 2 |
| 1880 | 7 |
| 1882 | 7 |
| 1883 | 48 |
| 1884 | 17 |
| 1885 | 51 |
| 1886 | 21 |
| 1887 | 30 |
| 1888 | 28 |
| 1889 | 34 |
| 1891 | 17 |
| 1892 | 61 |
| 1893 | 82 |
| 1894 | 57 |
| 1895 | 66 |
| 1899 | 24 |
| 1903 | 3 |
| 1904 | 2 |
| 1914 | 1 |
| 1929 | 1 |
705 stories matching mill
- The Shingle That Carried Washington Through the Panic of 1893
A year-end accounting of the state's sawmills and shingle mills shows a timber empire reaching twenty-two foreign countries — and a rail trade down 25 percent as the national depression bites.
- The Queen City’s Timber Heart: Inside Seattle’s Lumber Boom
A detailed look at the seven sawmills powering Seattle’s growth, the wages of the men who cut them, and a massive waterfront land deal that signals the city's future.
- Ballard's Shingle Mills Fire Back Up—But the Owners See Thin Margins
After a two-month shutdown, nearly every shingle mill in Ballard is running again. The smokestacks are busy, but low prices and a rail-car crunch keep the revival uneasy.
- The Weight of the Mill: A Logger’s Victory on Puget Sound
For years, loggers were cheated by mill-owned scales that rigged the weight to keep pay low—until the Papal Mill Company broke the cycle.
- The Forest Empire That Built Washington
A sweeping 1900 survey of the state's lumber industry counted billions of feet of standing timber, 250 sawmills, and $7 million a year in wages—proof that the trees, not the cities, came first.
- He Paid a Man $12 to Burn His Own House
A barber and the man he hired confess to torching 128 Rollin Street for the insurance money — a house that had already burned once, and whose policy had already been cut in half.
- The Seattle Mill Strike of 1885
When the Yesler Mill announced sudden wage cuts, the workers staged a walkout that paralyzed the waterfront.
- The Price of a Mill Hand's Life
An anonymous laborer exposes the exploitative wage practices of the Puget Mill Company, detailing how the firm undercuts competitors by replacing white workers with Chinese laborers at subsistence wages.
- Rising from the Ashes: A Seattle Sawmill's Rapid Rebirth
After a devastating fire, the Stetson & Post Mill Company leverages modern fire-safety technology and local community support to rebuild better than before.
- The Mill That Never Was: How Chicago Capitalists Tried to Buy Seattle’s Soul
In June 1899, Theo. Ludgate arrived in town promising 800 jobs and a massive milling enterprise. Instead, he sparked a legal battle over land leases and vanished back east, leaving behind only the ghost of an industrial boom.
- The Fight for the Ten-Hour Day on the Puget Sound
A historic, voluntary move by the Puget Mill Company to limit the workday sparks a push for better labor conditions in the mills.
- Ballard’s Shingle Mills Roar Back to Life
After months of silence due to litigation and economic uncertainty, the neighborhood's mill economy gears up for a busy winter.
- The Fiery End of a Ballard Mill
A state-of-the-art shingle mill in Ballard is reduced to cinders after a catastrophic fire, leaving 150 workers suddenly jobless.
- The Fire Fiend Stalks Seattle's Waterfront
A witness spots a mysterious arsonist fleeing the Western Mill in a rowboat, stoking fears of a serial firebug terrorizing the city's timber industry.
- Ballard Shingle Mill Destroyed in Early Morning Blaze
A $16,000 fire at the Jameson-Dixon mill highlights the lack of fire protection in the town of Ballard.
- The Dam That Shut Down Ballard
Fremont millers raised a timber barrier at Lake Union’s outlet. When Ballard’s mills lost their water, the fight went to court—after some talked of tearing it out by hand.
- A Circular Saw Opened His Skull—and He Stayed Conscious
At the Stetson Post Mill on Commercial Street, engineer Horatio Stetson crawled under a rip-saw table to fix a belt. The saw caught his head, cutting through bone and into his brain, yet he never lost consciousness.
- The Vanishing Mill: How Chicago Capital Was Driven Out of Vancouver by a City’s Defiant Stand
A Chicago millionaire’s plan to build a massive sawmill on an island in Vancouver, B.C., collapsed after local police and citizens physically evicted his workers. The fallout has sent the industrialist packing to Seattle, leaving behind political chaos and a debt of thousands to the Dominion government.
- Ballard Shingle Mill Workers Organize
A wage reduction sparks the formation of a 500-member labor union in the shingle mill district.
- Ballard’s Fire Chief Killed by a Falling 1,200-Pound Head-Block
Frank Finnerin was guiding five men across a mill tramway when the stringer gave way. He died fifteen minutes later in the boarding house, leaving a wife and three small children.
- The Seattle Grocer Who Died Chasing Central American Trade
J. E. Chilberg clawed back from a fire, a failed corporation and a panic to build a Puget Sound steamship trade with Guatemala — then went down with the foundering Colima on the voyage that was supposed to secure it.
- The Great Cedar Shingle Cartel: How Washington’s Mill Owners Colluded to Halt Production
In a bold move to stabilize collapsing prices, nearly all of the state's 141 cedar shingle mills agreed to shut down for two weeks, forming an association to enforce quality standards and living wages.
- The $100,000 Mill: Seattle’s Legalized Lottery for a Fortune
In 1876, the Washington Territory authorized a massive public lottery to fund a road across the Cascades. The grand prize? A fully operational steam sawmill and prime real estate in downtown Seattle.
- The City That Stopped Cutting: Why Seattle's Mills Shut Down
When an oversupply of lumber and a city-wide shift toward brick construction forced the city's mills into an unexpected, collective silence.
- The Struggle for the Seattle Mills
Striking workers at the Seattle mills face a stalemate as employers struggle to find enough non-union labor to maintain operations.
Also about this, in other words
- The Western Mill Company
Prominent local business leaders organize a new, modern lumber mill on the shores of Lake Union.
- A Near-Fatal Industrial Error at the Mill
A dangerous malfunction at a Seattle sawmill nearly crushes a worker, serving as a reminder of the perils of unregulated labor in the territory.
- A Massive $200,000 Flouring Mill to Rise in Seattle
A local merchant returning from the East reports that Seattle’s potential is drawing high-stakes capital, with plans for a major industrial mill in the works.