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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. The River That Swallowed a Steamboat: A Brave Attempt to Reach Snohomish Falls

   Twenty-five passengers and tons of freight battled the treacherous Snoqualmie River on the steamer *Columbia*, only to be stopped by a massive landslide just miles from their destination.

   May 20, 1876The Northern StarSnohomish, Snohomish CountyBoom & Bust · Strange But True

3. Trapped by the Tide on the Road to Queets

   In 1892, poet Herbert Bashford joined a camping party for a walk up Washington’s wild Olympic coast—and found the rising tide more dangerous than any highwayman.

   Jul 24, 1892The Seattle Post-IntelligencerQueets, Grays Harbor CountyStrange But True

4. Under Fire on the Way to Spokane: Seattle's Militia Rode Into a Rail War

   Col. Joseph Green's detachment returns from Spokane after escorting a mutinied company through burned bridges, ambushes and striker country—and the city turns out to cheer.

   Jul 15, 1894The Seattle Post-IntelligencerSeattle Armory, Seattle, King CountyWork & Pay

5. Thirty-Seven Miners Died Because They Stayed to Fight the Fire

   A blaze in the Franklin coal mine sent smoke through the gangways on Aug. 24, 1894, killing 37 men and boys who thought they had time to escape.

   Aug 25, 1894The Seattle Post-IntelligencerBlack Diamond, King CountyWork & Pay · Disasters

6. 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

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. 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

9. 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

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. A Breath of Fire-Damp Killed Twenty-Three Blue Canyon Miners

    A coal-mine explosion near Lake Whatcom wiped out nearly an entire shift just before it was due to change, leaving only two survivors to tell what happened underground.

    Apr 9, 1895The Seattle Post-IntelligencerBellingham, Whatcom CountyWork & Pay · Disasters

12. The Woman Who Crossed the Lines: A Civil War Journey Ends in Seattle

    Mrs. W. Harlan, who defied army orders and carried a lunch basket of soldiers' savings through Confederate country to reach her wounded husband, dies in Seattle.

    Mar 9, 1894The Seattle Post-IntelligencerSeattle, King County

13. 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

14. The Long Road to Camp Sealth

    Twenty-five girls and their chaperone endure a harrowing, breakdown-filled road trip from the Hanford-White Bluffs area to the Puget Sound for a summer camp adventure.

    Aug 1, 1924White Bluffs SpokesmanWhite Bluffs, Benton CountyStrange But True

15. 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

16. A Beardless Boy's 1855 Passage Through Puget Sound—and the Death of Abe Moses

    A reminiscence from the Montesano Vidette recalls Olympia as a village in the woods, a kindness in Steilacoom, and a fatal ambush during Washington's early Indian wars.

    Apr 13, 1892The Olympia TribuneOlympia, Thurston CountyExclusion & Resistance · Gone Forever

17. Thirty-Seven Miners Died 150 Feet From Safety

    An 1894 coroner's jury in Franklin, Washington, heard how a small fire in the Oregon Improvement Company's coal mine became a wall of smoke — and why the men who could have escaped stayed to fight it.

    Aug 26, 1894The Seattle Post-IntelligencerBlack Diamond, King CountyWork & Pay · Disasters

18. The Night They Walked to an Indian Village: A Shipwreck Survivor’s Tale

    After the steamer *Port Gordon* smashed against rocks near Destruction Island, four men survived a nightmare of broken lines and drowning comrades by building a raft from hatches—and then walking ten miles through the brush.

    Mar 7, 1889The Seattle Post-IntelligencerNeah Bay, Clallam CountyDisasters

19. The $275,000 Plan to Dredge Olympia Into a Deep-Water Port

    In 1892, a federal engineer proposed cutting a 12-foot channel through two miles of tide flats so ocean steamers could reach Fourth Street. The price tag was $275,000—and a bet on Olympia’s future.

    Feb 22, 1892The Olympia TribuneOlympia, Thurston CountyFollow the Money · Boom & Bust · City Hall

20. The Perilous Midnight Row Across the Sound

    After suffering a gruesome injury at a logging camp, a laborer spent a terrifying night lost in the dense fog of Puget Sound, desperately rowing toward medical help.

    Jan 24, 1892The Seattle Post-IntelligencerSalmon Bay, Seattle, King CountyWork & Pay · Strange But True

21. A Desperate Three-Hour Struggle in Willapa Bay

    A mother fighting the tides and the wind after her sailboat capsized managed to save both her young children before rescue arrived.

    Jun 8, 1892The Seattle Post-IntelligencerBay Center, Pacific CountyDisasters

22. The State Draws a Line Along Seattle’s Waterfront

    In 1896, Olympia fixed the harbor boundary from West Seattle to Meadow Point, mapped new Duwamish and Salmon Bay waterways, and cleared the way to sell tide lands.

    Jul 12, 1894The Seattle Post-IntelligencerSeattle, King CountyFollow the Money

23. Who Left Four Men Clinging to the Buckeye?

    When the steamer Buckeye swamped in Rosario Strait, survivors say Captain Hahn rowed ashore with the crew and never sent help back for the men freezing on the wreck.

    Apr 8, 1895The Seattle Post-IntelligencerAnacortes, Skagit CountyDisasters

24. The Blaine Fisherman Who Pulled Seven People Out of the Water and Never Told Anyone

    Hans Nielson is 24 years old, slight of build, and has saved seven lives in ten years — two in Denmark, five around Blaine — and calls each rescue a thing 'only incidental to the life of a water toiler.'

    May 22, 1895The Seattle Post-IntelligencerBlaine, Whatcom CountyStrange But True

25. Spokane Dressed for a Railroad King—and Waited Until Midnight

    Spokane Falls spent a week building arches and hanging evergreens for Henry Villard's Northern Pacific excursion, but delayed trains turned the grand reception into a series of after-dark whistle-stops—and Ulysses S. Grant drew the crowd that the railroad had promised.

    Sep 15, 1883Spokane Falls ReviewSpokane, Spokane CountyBoom & Bust

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