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1. 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

2. A Valley Drowns Every Spring—and One Farmer Wants a Better Dike

   A correspondent warns that the Pend Oreille freshet has wrecked $50,000 worth of Calispel Valley crops—and argues the proposed diking districts are too piecemeal to save the basin.

   Jun 25, 1908The Newport Miner (Newport, WA) 1899-CurrentCalispel Valley, CusickFollow the Money · City Hall · Disasters

3. The Treasurer Who Vanished, Then Wrote Home From Puget Sound

   An Iowa county official disappeared in the 1870s. After his death, his family gathered at the Olympia Hotel to settle an estate—and letters revealed a hidden life, a bank failure, and a real-estate boom he hoped would make restitution possible.

   Nov 24, 1891The Olympia TribuneOlympia Hotel, Olympia, Thurston CountyBoom & Bust · City Hall · True Crime

4. 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

5. Seattle's Bid to Be the Liverpool of America

   In 1895, boosters imagined a Lake Washington ship canal turning Puget Sound into a freshwater harbor for world commerce, coal trade, and naval power.

   Feb 24, 1895The Seattle Post-IntelligencerSeattle, King CountyFollow the Money · Boom & Bust

6. Snowbound Actors Race the Clock to Make Their Seattle Curtain

   A stalled train nearly cancels the show, but the Riggs company reaches Cordray's at 9, dresses in a hurry — and performs without supper for a handful of loyal ticket-holders.

   Jan 4, 1895The Seattle Post-IntelligencerSeattle, King County

7. The Poor Man's Stump Burner: Newport Farmers Pack Kelly's Hall

   In 1909, 150 farmers crowded a Newport hall to hear a state expert explain how to clear land by charring stumps—a low-cost method that promised to open Pend Oreille County fields.

   Mar 10, 1910The Newport Miner (Newport, WA) 1899-CurrentNewport, Pend Oreille County

8. 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.

   Jul 30, 1894The Seattle Post-IntelligencerSt. Mark's Church, Seattle, King CountyWork & Pay

9. The Race War in Roslyn: How Seattle’s Coal Mines Became a Battleground for Labor and Lynching

   As strikers hold the line, the company imports Black miners from Illinois to break them. The result is not just a labor dispute, but a violent racial confrontation that exposes the dark underbelly of Washington's industrial boom.

   Jan 30, 1889The Seattle Post-IntelligencerMine No. 3, Roslyn, Kittitas CountyWork & Pay

10. The Rifle War: Knights of Labor vs. Mine Owners in Newcastle

    A bitter feud between rival labor unions in King County erupts into armed conflict, with rifles smuggled from Seattle to support striking miners.

    Jan 22, 1889The Seattle Post-IntelligencerNewcastle, King CountyWork & Pay

11. A Saw Cut Through His Brain. Seattle Doctors Watched Him Live.

    Horatio Stetson's head was nearly split in two by a rip saw at a Seattle mill. Thirty-six hours later, he was talking, moving his limbs, and astonishing the physicians at Providence Hospital.

    Jan 25, 1895The Seattle Post-IntelligencerSeattle, King CountyWork & Pay · Strange But True

12. The Interior Secretary Came to See Whether the Puyallups Could Manage Their Own Land. He Left Surprised.

    John W. Noble toured the Puyallup reservation's farms ahead of opening it to sale — and found the people he had been told could not handle their affairs running them well.

    Aug 24, 1892The Seattle Post-IntelligencerPuyallup Indian Reservation, Tacoma, Pierce CountyExclusion & Resistance

13. The Body in the Box: A Political Murder Haunts Spokane County

    Charles F. Gloystein crossed the Freeman's Protective Silver Federation and disappeared. Now his neighbors are offering a $1,000 reward—not for a killer, but for the body.

    Aug 10, 1894The Seattle Post-IntelligencerMicaFollow the Money · True Crime

14. Seattle's Canal Backers Turn Up the Pressure—and the Cash

    Boosters behind the Lake Washington canal reported fresh subscriptions, promised a gravity water supply for the tide flats, and argued the city could not afford to miss its chance.

    Apr 10, 1895The Seattle Post-IntelligencerSeattle, King CountyFollow the Money · Boom & Bust

15. A Gavel, a Roar, and a Populist Ticket Born in Chaos

    King County's People's Party convention at Turner Hall turned into a shouting, proxy-fighting, faction-splitting marathon—and buried Dr. J. Eugene Jordan and Jack McDonald on the way to nominating a ticket.

    Sep 7, 1894The Seattle Post-IntelligencerSeattle, King CountyCity Hall

16. The $80,000 Cranberry Bog Behind the Ilwaco Beach

    A state commissioner tours Pacific County's cranberry marsh — 1,600 acres, 7,280 bushels shipped to San Francisco, 200 pickers at fifty cents a bushel, and a company openly hoping to replace its Chinese crew with white labor.

    Aug 20, 1898Ranche and RangeIlwaco, Pacific CountyWork & Pay · Follow the Money · Exclusion & Resistance

17. The Moth That Ate Washington's Apple Boom

    Government experts blamed the codlin moth for ruining a quarter of the nation's apples each year. In Walla Walla and along the Snake River, some orchardists were already pulling up trees in despair.

    Feb 15, 1904The RanchWalla Walla, Walla Walla CountyDisasters

18. The Jail That Wasn't: A Tour of Port Madison’s Fortress

    While Seattle’s own jails were often little more than wooden rooms with locks, the new facility on Port Madison was built like a fortress—iron spikes, windlass doors, and a view of the sound. But its warden faces a grim reality: no work for his prisoners.

    Jun 24, 1876Puget Sound DispatchPoulsbo, Kitsap CountyCity Hall · Gone Forever

19. 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

20. The Seal Pup Wars: A Local Naturalist vs. The Smithsonian’s ‘Sense-Keeper’

    James G. Swan, a long-time Neah Bay resident and customs inspector, challenges Henry W. Elliott’s decades-old claim that newborn fur seal pups sink like stones, offering eyewitness testimony from Captain Elijah McAlmond that they swim.

    Jan 29, 1891The Seattle Post-IntelligencerNeah Bay, Clallam CountyScandal

21. 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

22. A Michigan Orator Packs the Armory and Rides Down the Populists

    Roswell G. Horr brings the Republican gospel of protection and sound money to a standing-room crowd in Seattle — and turns the free-silver men in the hall into the evening's comedy act.

    Jun 10, 1894The Seattle Post-IntelligencerSeattle, King CountyFollow the Money · City Hall

23. Olympia Cut Salaries and School Terms to Survive the Panic of 1893

    Facing depression, Washington’s capital city slashed official pay, shortened the school year to six months, and bet on harbor work and a new capitol to pull itself out.

    Jan 6, 1895The Seattle Post-IntelligencerOlympia, Thurston CountyBoom & Bust · City Hall

24. 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.

    Mar 3, 1895The Seattle Post-IntelligencerBrinnon, Jefferson CountyStrange But True

25. Whatcom and Fairhaven Almost Become One City — but Fairhaven Balked

    A proposed merger of the two bay towns raised questions of debt, water and electric power, and who would control the new city.

    Feb 17, 1893The Seattle Post-IntelligencerBellingham, Whatcom CountyCity Hall

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