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240 stories matching plank
- Seattle and Tacoma Nearly Came to Blows Over the Ship Canal
At the 1892 Democratic state convention, King County's demand for a canal plank turned the floor into a shouting mob — and the vote flipped twice in a single night.
- The Canal Plank That Nearly Tore Washington’s Democrats Apart
In Olympia, King County delegates fought Pierce County over whether to endorse the Lake Washington canal. They settled on a vague promise, then spent the night shouting each other down.
- Seattle Lost the Ship Canal Fight in One Olympia Night
The 1892 Democratic state convention rejected the Lake Washington ship canal, humiliated King County's delegates and nominated Henry J. Snively for governor — setting off a political feud over Seattle's waterfront future.
- Seattle Democrats Bolt Their Own Party Over the Lake Washington Canal
Furious that the state convention caved to Pierce County and denounced the Lake Washington canal, King County Democrats vow to vote the Republican ticket — and to knife their own party from top to bottom.
- Four Years, Four Factions, and Still No Pavement on Pacific Avenue
Tacoma's property owners have bickered for four years over how to pave the street running through their town — bituminous rock, plank, wood, or plank-on-gravel — so the council has finally given them until June 1 to agree, or it will choose for them.
- The Struggle to Climb Seattle’s Hills
Before the regrades and the tunnels, the steep climb to the city's plateau was a daily battle for horses and carriages, sparking calls for plank roads.
- The Dangerous Plank Walk of Old Seattle
While the city dragged its feet on street improvements in 1878, residents were forced to navigate treacherous, makeshift wooden planks, causing frustration and daily peril.
- The Silver Fight That Split Washington's Republicans
A packed Spokane convention picked judges and congressmen, then turned on a single plank: whether the party would demand free silver.
- Seattle's First Real Street Paving
A specimen half-block is laid on Commercial Street as a test to end the era of plank roads and mud.
- The Railroad Lobby's Quiet Plan to Buy a Governor and Kill the Commission
A Walla Walla editor warns that railroad interests will avoid an open fight over regulation by nominating a friendly, colorless candidate—then using him to veto the commission bill.
- Seattle's Streets Were Made of Wood. The Fight to Pave Them Was On.
A City Council vote for brick on Pike Street signaled the end of makeshift plank roads—if Seattle could stomach the first cost.
- The Lovers’ Lane of Snohomish
A newly constructed plank road, intended for industrial timber transit, becomes an unlikely promenade for the town's romantic youth.
- The Sky Turned to Smoke: Forest Fires Choke Puget Sound
Fires across Whatcom, Skagit and the Olympic Mountains destroyed bridges, barns and a shingle mill, derailed a Great Northern train and left Puget Sound under a suffocating haze.
- The President’s Directive at the Hotel Tacoma
A leaked account of a 1903 banquet reveals how Theodore Roosevelt settled a local political dispute over railroad regulation with a single, sharp rebuke.
- The Wharf That Ate Its Workers: Seattle’s First Major Infrastructure Failure
In September 1876, a newly built lumber wharf in Seattle collapsed under the weight of its own laborers, sending Chinese workers and timber plunging into the Duwamish River. The disaster exposed the rotting reality of territorial construction and the precarious lives of immigrant labor.
- The Battle Over Sidewalks: When Seattle's Poor Were Forced to Pay for Progress
In 1885, a divided City Council grappled with whether to tax struggling residents for public infrastructure or use the city's general fund.
- The City’s Great Bicycle Experiment
Walla Walla’s Bicycle Commissioner tests asphalt versus wood planks as he pushes to expand city infrastructure for wheelmen.
- Main Street Refuses to Be Paved
Property owners between Fifth and Sixth beat back a macadam upgrade, a councilman berates them for it, and the street gets planks instead.
- Grays Harbor Voters Skeptical of McGraw's Ditch Scheme
A visit from Republican gubernatorial candidate John H. McGraw leaves local voters cold as he doubles down on the controversial Lake Washington canal project at the expense of local harbor interests.
- The City's Experimental Bike Lane
Walla Walla tests a new $140 wooden bicycle path on Alder Street to solve the issue of rough cinder trails.
- A Deadly Hole on Pioneer Place
A routine street crossing turns fatal when rotten wooden planks give way under a carriage horse.
- The Truck That Blocked Main Street
A driver is arrested for obstructing traffic, only for the City Attorney to realize there is no law against it.
- Seattle’s Canal Demand Became a Political Trap
At the 1892 Democratic state convention in Olympia, King County’s push for a Lake Washington ship canal collided with a Pierce County-led alliance—and James Hamilton Lewis’s gubernatorial hopes hung in the balance.
- The Political Battle Over the Lake Washington Ship Canal
Both parties are fighting over the proposed ship canal, with Republican and Democratic platforms diverging sharply on the project's viability.
- The Failed Heist at Shaw’s Boarding House
An audacious attempt to rob a Tacoma mill worker's boarding house ends in a series of slapstick mishaps and a gunshot.
Also about this, in other words
- The Unsung Pioneer: A Plank Road to the Beach
While Seattle boomed, a local booster named Michael Kelly set out to connect the rural fringes of the Duwamish Valley to the city, one subscription at a time.
- The Great 'Pulp' Boom of Seattle
While Seattle’s real estate developers were busy building the city, the local papers were fixated on an odd, failed experiment to tow a massive Canadian timber raft down the Pacific Coast to California—a project that ended in a floating, ocean-clogging disaster.
- An Industrial Experiment on the Waterfront
Local entrepreneur James M. Colman introduces a new technology to protect wharf pilings from the destructive 'teredo' wood-boring worm.
- Saving the Piers from the Teredo Worm
A new industrial chemical process is proposed to protect Seattle's waterfront timber from marine parasites.
- The Last Plank Goes Down on East Main Street's New Steel Bridge
After months of "vexatious delays," Walla Walla's street commissioner can finally point to a finished span — and Sixth Street is next on the list.
- Twenty-Ton Cable Sinks into Pioneer Place
A massive power-house cable falls through a street-level planking, requiring hours of heavy lifting to recover.
- The Lumber Lobby Scores a Panama Canal Win
Pacific coast lumbermen outmaneuvered the Panama Canal Commission to exempt deck-loads from tonnage fees, signaling the power of regional industry over federal regulation.
- The Perilous Plank at Front and Seneca
For months, Seattle residents braved a treacherous, unlit crossing near the waterfront, until a cook’s brutal fall finally forced a call for accountability.