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174 stories matching slow
- The Lumber Industry's Long Wait for the Iron Horse
As Seattle's timber economy struggled under local isolation in 1893, local mill owners pinned their hopes for survival on the impending arrival of the Great Northern Railway.
- Bellingham Bay Burned While Puget Sound Choked on Smoke
Forest fires from the British border to the Olympic Mountains sent a pall over Seattle, slowed steamers and trains, and destroyed homes, a bridge and a thirty-room mansion near Whatcom.
- Telescoped at the Crossing: A Grant Street Horror
When a Northern Pacific freight train plowed into an electric streetcar on May 20, 1909, one man died and dozens were mangled in the icy water below. The crash exposed dangerous speeds and negligent watchmen at a city intersection that remains vital today.
- 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.
- A Near-Fatal Train Wreck Averted by a Rooftop Signal
A head-on collision between a passenger train and a freight train on the outskirts of Kennewick results in mass wreckage but miraculous survival.
- 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.
- Seven Months at Sea: The State of Maine’s Ordeal
The State of Maine left New York in July 1892 and reached Seattle 201 days later, her crew disabled by saltwater boils, her water spoiled, and her captain forced to beat men to the pumps.
- Turning Stumps into a City: Seattle's Great Transformation
For a quarter-century, the residents of Seattle have been waging a slow, expensive war against the forest, clearing timber, leveling hills, and filling ravines to make way for a modern city.
- A Lynching in Dayton: When Neighbors Decided the Law Was Too Slow
After James McPherson, one of the Cummins murderers, won a new trial and a reprieve, a Dayton mob hanged him—prompting the Post-Intelligencer to ask why vigilante justice was reviving in Washington Territory.
- The $100,000,000 Fruit Crop Looks for a Fair Price
Northwest growers draft a cooperative marketing contract, and White Bluffs-area orchardists are summoned to Hanford to hear the plan.
- In the County Jail, a Prisoner Fashions His Own Rope From a Sash
Awaiting a trip to Auburn to face a murder charge, a Japanese prisoner tries to end his life with the only materials his cell allows — and is found in time.
- A Rare Grade-Crossing Collision
A gasoline-powered handcar strikes a local attorney's automobile in a bizarre wreck that left a section foreman injured.
- The State Moved the Line, and the Waterfront Went With It
Tide-land owners at Port Angeles say they filled in the harbor in good faith, paid their money, and then learned the state had redrawn the meander line to swallow the most valuable frontage — and that the attorney general now refuses to issue their deeds.
- Seattle’s Post-Panic Pep Talk: Canals, Steel and Paved Streets
On New Year’s Day 1895, Seattle’s mayor and aldermen promised economy, railroad terminals and a Lake Washington canal—and insisted the Panic of 1893 was finally fading.
- The Farmer Who Said the Colleges Were Failing Rural Washington
Addressing the state dairymen, farmer Wm. F. Izett argues that the land-grant colleges move too slowly and cost too much to save the farm — and pitches a cheaper, faster kind of agricultural school as the 'machine gun' the countryside needs.
- The Unlucky Speckled Hen and the Tarring Party
In an era of domestic tension, a Washington housewife's patience for her husband's sloth and a neighbor’s story of a local scoundrel collide in a kitchen mishap.
- The Dangerous Thrill of Everett's Early Auto-Cycle Races
Before high-speed motorcycles were common, the Everett Auto Cycle Club turned a local track into a proving ground for 'dare-devil' riders and humorous slow-races.
- The Political Theater of 1885 Seattle
An overheard dialogue between two political 'gentlemen' reveals the messy, backroom realities of early Seattle’s 'Law and Order' movement.
- The Boom on the Bay: How Seattle Suburbs Remade the City
Electric streetcars and new transit lines are transforming Seattle’s geography, pushing the city's identity into the outskirts as the 'slow, old horse-car' becomes a relic of the past.
- The Day the Kingston Died: A Steamship Collision and the Pilot’s Tale
Pilot Gatter recounts the terrifying moments when the steamer Glenogle collided with the passenger liner Kingston in Puget Sound, sending hundreds of feet of steel into the water.
- 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.
- A Mountain of Coffins: Franklin Buries Its Miners
After a mine fire killed 37 men, the coal town of Franklin held a day of funerals—five graves at Black Diamond, three Italian miners on a hillside, and widows whose grief doctors feared would kill them.
- Tragedy at the Roslyn Mines
A devastating explosion traps forty-four miners in the Roslyn slope, leaving families in despair.
- The Soldier Who Missed: Why Seattle Is Rooting for a Court-Martialed Hero
Sergeant Mason’s attempt to assassinate the man who killed Garfield has turned him from a mutineer into a martyr, sparking petitions and subscriptions across the Pacific Northwest.
- The Vigilantes' Ghost: Seattle's Dark Secret in Two Maple Trees
A poem published in the *Seattle Daily Post-Intelligencer* reveals the city’s foundational myth: that its current 'peaceable' order was bought with the blood of six men hanged by a secret committee when the law failed to act.
Also about this, in other words
- The Deaf Dodge
A local drunkard tries to outsmart a judge by faking deafness, only to be tripped up by the prospect of a free drink.
- A High-Speed Crash Into a Saloon
After a harrowing collision on Puyallup Avenue, a local couple sues their driver for reckless speed.
- Kennewick's Ten-Mile-Per-Hour Traffic Crackdown
City council mandates strict enforcement of speed limits and lighting requirements for automobiles and motorcycles.
- Tacoma Police Launch War on Speeders
After receiving numerous complaints, the police department is arming officers with stopwatches to catch drivers breaking city speed limits.
- The Bottleneck at the Port of Tacoma
While Seattle’s docks are praised for their 'prompt' efficiency, the port of Tacoma is suffering from a two-month delay in cargo loading, frustrating ship masters and hurting the regional economy.
- The First Speeding Ticket in Kennewick
A local delivery driver learns the hard way that the city's new traffic ordinance has teeth.
- The Smooth Stranger’s Trap: A Banker’s Warning Against the 'Get Rich Quick' Scam
In 1920s Kennewick, local banks warned citizens that 'smooth strangers' peddling investments were likely frauds, urging residents to keep their money in trusted institutions rather than chasing phantom profits.
- Death the Price of a Job
A brutal internal railroad memo reveals that safety rules were meant for legal protection, while speed was the only metric that mattered for keeping a job.