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1. They Climbed Rainier First—and Slept in a Sulphur-Scented Ice Cave

   In 1870, Hazard Stevens and P. B. Van Trump reached Mount Rainier's summit after a brutal 10½-hour climb, then spent a freezing night beside volcanic steam vents.

   Jan 6, 1895The Seattle Post-IntelligencerMount Rainier, Pierce CountyStrange But True

2. Six Men Climbed a Smoking Rainier in Midwinter

   When Mount Rainier seemed to erupt in 1894, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer sent Maj. E. S. Ingraham and five companions up the Carbon River in deep winter to find out what was really happening.

   Jan 6, 1895The Seattle Post-IntelligencerMount Rainier, Pierce CountyStrange But True

3. 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.

   Jan 6, 1895The Seattle Post-IntelligencerMount Rainier, Pierce CountyStrange But True

4. Rainier Is Taller Than the Map: The Barometer Fight Over Washington’s Mountain

   A new summit reading revived a two-year-old claim: Olympia’s Dr. Riley had used three government barometers to put Mount Rainier near 15,000 feet—well above the official 14,444.

   Aug 9, 1894The Seattle Post-IntelligencerMount Rainier, Pierce CountyStrange But True

5. A Seattle Expedition Sets Out to Map Mount Rainier's Glaciers—and Find a Hidden Volcano

   Major Ingraham's party leaves Seattle for three weeks on the mountain, hoping to name glaciers, test mineral springs, and locate a smoking volcano seen from the foothills.

   Jul 13, 1894The Seattle Post-IntelligencerMount Rainier, Pierce CountyStrange But True

6. The General Who Conquered Rainier First

   A century after his perilous climb, Gen. A.V. Kautz recounts the first recorded ascent of Mount Rainier to a Seattle reporter, correcting the historical record on glaciers and glory.

   Jan 30, 1889The Seattle Post-IntelligencerSeattle, King CountyStrange But True

7. The Night They Slept in Rainier's Ice Caves

   A Seattle climbing party returns from Mount Rainier after a storm-bound night in the summit ice caves—and Tacoma greets them like a circus.

   Jul 25, 1894The Seattle Post-IntelligencerMount Rainier, Pierce CountyStrange But True

8. The Valley Sixty Miles From a Railroad

   In 1892, the Big Bottom settlers of Lewis County had no road, no sawmill and no rail line — just hand-hewn homes, packhorses, a tobacco-chewing cat, and a Fourth of July party for 160 neighbors.

   Jul 25, 1892The Seattle Post-IntelligencerMorton, Lewis CountyStrange But True

9. The Wild Goose Trail: How $25,000 Chased a Mountain Pass That Wasn't There

   A state commission, an over-imaginative mountaineer and a sober engineer collide over a wagon road across the Cascades — and the taxpayers pick up the bill.

   Aug 16, 1894The Seattle Post-IntelligencerBellingham, Whatcom CountyCity Hall · Strange But True

10. 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.

    Jul 27, 1892The Seattle Post-IntelligencerSeattle, King CountyBoom & Bust · Strange But True

11. The Naturalist Sent to Trap the Olympics' Unknown Animals

    A government field agent bound for Hoodsport planned to collect elk, bears, marmots and mountain beavers—and maybe discover a rodent scientists had never named.

    Aug 10, 1894The Seattle Post-IntelligencerSeattle, King CountyStrange But True

12. The Fight to Make Rainier Uncle Sam’s Park

    In 1894, scientists and mountaineers asked Congress to protect Mount Rainier as a national park—while carefully carving out the coal fields and leaving railroad passes open.

    Aug 23, 1894The Seattle Post-IntelligencerMount Rainier, Mount RainierFollow the Money

13. Prospectors Return From the Wild Olympics

    An exploration party recounts the rugged terrain and gold-bearing quartz found near the head of the Hood Canal.

    Jun 17, 1854Pioneer and DemocratOlympia, Thurston CountyStrange But True

14. A Ninety-Foot Fall Down an Icy Mountain—and He Walked Away

    William Wade tumbled down a steep incline in the Cascades while hunting mountain goats, bounding off icy benches before disappearing under a snowbank. He survived with bruises and a sprained ankle.

    Aug 16, 1894The Seattle Post-IntelligencerSkagit CountyStrange But True

15. The Senator and the Invisible Mountain

    A visiting U.S. Senator’s high-profile welcome to Seattle is punctured by the realization that local landmark Mount Rainier is nowhere to be seen behind the heavy, industrial smog of the 1880s.

    Aug 17, 1887Seattle Daily Post-IntelligencerSeattle, King CountyBoom & Bust · Strange But True

16. The Desolation of the Arid Belt

    A pioneer reflects on four decades in Washington and Idaho, warning that unchecked grazing and timber harvesting are turning fertile mountain valleys into sagebrush barrens.

    Jun 18, 1891The Yakima HeraldYakima, Yakima CountyFollow the Money

17. Renaming the Great Mountain

    After years of dispute with Seattle, Tacoma officials celebrate a victory in restoring the Indigenous name of the mountain to Northern Pacific Railway maps.

    Feb 2, 1909The Tacoma TimesTacoma, Pierce CountyBoom & Bust

18. The Mountain Tacoma Tried to Take

    A railroad president's marketing decree put 'Tacoma' on maps of the great peak across the East — while Seattle refused to surrender the name of a British admiral who never saw it.

    Dec 5, 1891The Olympia TribuneTacoma, Pierce CountyBoom & Bust · Strange But True

19. The Mountain That Spilled a Flood

    An eyewitness watches a mysterious, cataclysmic burst of water tear through a mountain ravine near Colville, obliterating trees and tracks.

    May 13, 1893The Seattle Post-IntelligencerColville, Stevens CountyDisasters

20. The Rival Engineers Who Carved the Pacific Northwest

    A look back at the lives of General Anderson and Major Rogers, the architectural titans whose competition through the Cascades and Selkirk mountains built the backbone of the region's railroad legacy.

    May 17, 1889The Seattle Post-IntelligencerSeattle, King CountyBoom & Bust

21. The Mountain That Watched: Fire on Mount Rainier’s Peak

    As Seattle and Portland celebrated the Fourth of July with parades and speeches, a mysterious signal fire blazed atop Mount Rainier, drawing thousands of eyes to the sky.

    Jul 5, 1888The Seattle Post-IntelligencerSeattle, King CountyStrange But True

22. Seattle's 1877 Plea: Build a Wagon Road Over the Cascades Before Portland Steals the Inland Empire

    With no railroad yet across the mountains, a Seattle newspaper argued the city's future depended on a wagon road to Yakima—before Portland grabbed the inland trade forever.

    Mar 17, 1877Puget Sound DispatchSeattle, King CountyBoom & Bust

23. The Perils of 'Honest' John Kelly

    A prospector’s winter isolation in the Cascade mountains turns into a desperate fight for survival against avalanches and mountain lions.

    Feb 27, 1893The Seattle Post-IntelligencerSalmon la Sac, Cle Elum, Kittitas CountyWork & Pay · Disasters

24. Sixteen Seattleites Climb Rainier, With Carrier Pigeons and a Night on the Crater

    Two members of a Seattle climbing party return from Mount Rainier after the rest push on to the summit, where they plan to camp amid volcanic steam and signal the city with bonfires.

    Jul 21, 1894The Seattle Post-IntelligencerMount Rainier, Pierce CountyStrange But True

25. The Ghost of the Cascades

    A surveying party deep in the mountains unearths an 'enchanted' sentinel—a booby-trapped cache of Russian gold and goods left behind by a doomed expedition from 1816.

    Nov 19, 1880The Daily IntelligencerSeattle, King CountyTrue Crime

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