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| Year | Stories |
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| 1859 | 1 |
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232 stories matching shoe
- Keep Your Money at Home? In Kennewick, the Shoe-Leather Trail Led to Pasco
A letter to the editor takes aim at buy-local boosterism, arguing that Kennewick shoppers already knew the real prices—and often crossed the river to Pasco or sent away for mail-order catalogs.
- The Agony of Fashionable Feet
A traveler reflects on the misery of tight-fitting boots, finding in them a metaphor for the 'tight shoes of the soul' that burden our daily lives.
- The Shoe That Could Save Seattle: Why We Must Stop Exporting Our Hides to San Francisco
An editorial in the Puget Sound Dispatch argues that Seattle’s economic survival depends on manufacturing its own boots and shoes locally, rather than shipping raw hides south for a 10% premium.
- A Body in the Ashes at Rolling Bay
An eyewitness to the coroner's inquest corrects the Post-Intelligencer's lurid account of a bullet-scarred, half-burned corpse found in a shack on Bainbridge Island — and lays out his own theory of an unsolved Kitsap County killing.
- The Smooth Talker of Tacoma
A persuasive con man leaves a trail of bamboozled businessmen and empty wallets.
- Seattle Investors Plan a Boot Factory and Tannery
Before tech and aerospace, Seattle’s business elite plotted to stop shipping raw hides to San Francisco and instead build a city of tanneries and shoe factories.
- The Thief With Two Left Feet
A burglar targeting a downtown clothing store learned the hard way that his loot was perfectly useless.
- A Thief’s Failed Defense in Seattle
A young man attempted to claim he bought stolen goods from a second-hand shop, but the shopkeeper was called to court to prove him a liar.
- The Child Shop-Lifters of Pike Street
Two young sisters are caught in an organized attempt to steal shoes from a downtown store, revealing a family in deep poverty.
- The Riverboat Captain Who Was Everyone’s Personal Errands Boy
Before the age of reliable logistics, the Snohomish riverboat captain was the community’s unofficial delivery service, tasked with everything from baby shoes to engine parts.
- The Case of the Beachcomber's Shoes
A pair of old shoes found on the beach, stenciled with a name, failed to convince a federal judge that a local cook was an illegal immigrant.
- The Boycott of the Famous Shoe House
Nine clerks are arrested for libel after attempting to organize an 'early closing' movement by boycotting a merchant who refused to shut his doors at 6 p.m.
- The Town Where Horses Wore Wooden Shoes
La Conner grew slowly on a rocky knoll in the Skagit delta, diked its tidal flats, and shipped out hay by the ton—while its horses clumped through spring mud in wooden moccasins.
- The Burglar Who Hid Behind a Show Case—and the Shoes That Gave Him Away
Richard Ford, a notorious clothing-house thief, got out of the King County Jail for four hours. A neighbor's sharp eyes and a pair of shoes ended the run.
- Seattle’s Food and Shelter Depot Served 5,572 Free Meals in December
The charity’s weekly report defended free meals, promised work for the able-bodied, and insisted it served all comers regardless of race or religion.
- The Gang That Left the Coat Hangers Behind
Two break-ins in twelve days, fifty-five suits and a thousand dollars gone, and a trail of hangers in a brush heap behind the Kennewick Hotel.
- The Horseshoe King of Moscow
A Seattle blacksmith's apprentice wins a lucrative international contract to shoe royal horses in Russia.
- The Mystery of the Cedar River Monsters
A fishing expedition into the wilderness turns into a strange, unexplained struggle against an unseen force in the depths of the river.
- Log-Rolling Tragedy at Cascade Mill
A foreman is killed in a workplace accident after slipping in smooth-soled shoes.
- The Night the Burglar Lost His Shoes: A Seattle Thief Flees in Stockings
A daring break-in at a Bell Street laundry ends in farce when the thief is spotted before he can steal anything, forcing him to flee barefoot and leaving behind his footwear as evidence.
- The Arctic Ghost Ships Found in a Seattle Paper
A haunting inventory of the lost Franklin Expedition, recovered by Lieutenant Schwatka, offers a somber look at the items that survived a generation in the ice.
- The Shoe-Stealing Vagabond of Grant Street
A suspicious man found peddling a suitcase full of brand-new footwear on a Seattle bridge lands in jail.
- Seattle’s 1895 Co-op Where 150 Unemployed Men Ate for 7 Cents a Day
At a Belltown barracks, unemployed single men pooled their wages, submitted to military-style rules and fed an average of 150 people daily for about 7 cents each.
- The Iron Hotel: Seattle's Jail Let Convicted Killers Wait Out the Law
A 1905 exposé inside the King County jail found convicted murderers lingering for years in a steel cage while appeals stalled, one prisoner fashioning a pistol from a shoe shank and escaping, and taxpayers footing the bill.
- The Day Seattle Shut Down: Sailors, Longshoremen and the First Labor Day
Banks, courts and public offices closed for the first time in the city's history, 2,500 people packed Pioneer Place for a 36-minute tug-of-war, and a labor orator told the crowd that good wages are the engine of everyone's prosperity.
Also about this, in other words
- The 'Toe Social' of Tacoma
A mischievous fundraising dance where bachelors bid on mystery partners based solely on a glimpse of their feet.
- The Sad Case of the Shoe-Snatching Prisoner
A man’s desperate theft of footwear ends in a courtroom, highlighting the meager choices available to the poor in 1870s Seattle.
- The Shoemaker's Retribution
A downtown confrontation erupts after a local businessman catches a thief red-handed.
- The Unbeatable Guarantee of Elliott M. Best
In 1876, a Seattle shoemaker promised that if his hand-sewn boots broke, he’d replace them for free.
- The Shoemaker of Front Street
A quiet tragedy in a small storefront captures the desperate pride of a laborer working through the final stages of illness.
- The Tragedy of the Pigeon-Toed Dude
A brief, biting observation from the Seattle Press on the shifting aesthetics of late 19th-century masculinity and fashion.
- The Shoemaker Who Refused Charity
Charles Lett, a struggling shoemaker, worked at his bench until the very end, leaving behind a legacy of pride that challenged the city’s notions of poverty and 'divine providence.'
- The Shoemaker's Windfall
When a simple shop sign is caught by the wind, it leads to an unexpected—and quite public—domestic confession.