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349 stories matching smoke
- 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.
- 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.
- The Summer the Smoke Saved the Harvest
With rainfall a third of normal and crops burning in the fields, Seattle's paper made the case that the season's suffocating pall of forest-fire smoke had been the region's salvation.
- A Wall of Smoke and Flame Across Puget Sound
Forest fires from Hood Canal to the Nooksack Valley left dozens of families homeless in 1894, while smoke turned steamboat travel blind and daily life in Seattle into a gray haze.
- 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.
- Seattle’s First Battle for Clean Air
The city council passes a landmark ordinance to curb factory smoke, signaling a crackdown on the industrial polluters that have long choked the downtown air.
- A Church Scandal Erupts in a Seattle Libel Trial
M. H. Nichols stood accused of criminally libeling Presiding Elder T. B. Ford. The defense spent the day trading rumors, old grudges, and one complaint about the prosecutor's booming voice.
- A 3 A.M. Saloon Fire Puts a Whole Block in Peril
Smoke seeping from the basement of A. L. Ries's Eagle saloon roused the Dunlap Hotel and threatened an entire frame row on Washington Avenue — and renewed Newport's long push for a real fire company.
- Mount Baker Wakes: Smoke, a New Rent, and an Earthquake at Dawn
Smoke rises a thousand feet from the Twin Sisters and Mount Baker, a fresh quarter-mile crack opens in the mountain, and a predawn shock rattles Whatcom County residents.
- The City That Breathed Soot: Seattle’s First War on Air Pollution
In 1898, the Board of Health declared a 'war upon smoke' to save the city from choking on its own industrial exhaust. It was one of the earliest municipal attempts to regulate air quality in America.
- 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.
- Mount Rainier Was Smoking, and Olympia Noticed
In January 1895, a correspondent watching through a glass saw great volumes rising from the summit — and wondered whether the mountain had awakened.
- Smoke So Thick You Could Not See a Block: The August the Sound Went Dark
Forest and peat fires from Lynden to Wilkeson filled Puget Sound with smoke in late August 1894. Seattle's weather observer promised rain within thirty-six hours, and Whatcom County counted its losses.
- The Detective Who Could Smell a Crime
A keen-nosed Tacoma detective tracked an opium den by its scent, leading to the arrest of two men and the confiscation of 'elegant' pipes.
- The Cigarette Divorce
A Seattle woman sues for divorce, claiming her husband's persistent habit of smoking cigarettes in bed was a personal indignity that ruined her rest.
- A Jury Called the Franklin Mine Fire Arson. Thirty-Seven Miners Were Already Dead.
A coroner's jury found that someone deliberately set the fire that suffocated 37 workers in the Franklin mine. The only survivor described how one opened door and one stopped fan turned the gangway into a death trap.
- 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 Rockets Turned Around: Tacoma's Fourth of July Went Up in a Sheet of Flame
A spark touched off the entire $500 pyrotechnic stock at Wright Park, driving rockets and bombs into a crowd of thousands and leaving women and children burned, trampled and briefly lost in the smoke.
- The Slave Ship That Vanished: An Old Man’s Confession in Seattle
A weathered sailor walks into a Seattle saloon and recounts the night his crew mutinied against a slaver, only to watch the ship sink with 200 souls aboard.
- 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.
- Tragedy on the Twenty-Fifth Street Bridge
A young Tacoma boy is killed by an electric streetcar after being blinded by locomotive smoke.
- The 1885 Opium Raid on Washington Street
Constable Van Doren and the Knights of Labor descend upon Chinese opium dens in a bid to test the legality of territorial anti-smoking laws.
- The Grand Jury's List of Complaints
In 1885, Seattle’s grand jury turned its attention to everything from jail conditions to the 'inhaling or smoking' of opium, highlighting a city struggling with the growing pains of a frontier boom.
- Post Office Inferno Narrowly Avoided
A quick-thinking resident discovers a fire smoldering under the post office stove, saving the block from total destruction.
- The Pastor, the Circular, and the Hung Jury
For three days a Seattle courtroom heard accusations of adultery, an illegitimate son, and a pastor’s libelous circular. At 12:35 a.m., the jury was still deadlocked.
Also about this, in other words
- Cigarettes Ignite a Spokane Lumber Yard
A blaze in the Falls City Lumber Company yard leaves a homeowner and a company with thousands in losses.
- The Smoke That Choked Seattle
A Seattle timber investor returns from the Puget Sound to find the region shrouded in disaster as forest fires consume the landscape.
- The Smoke That Choked the Sound
As Seattle rebuilds from its Great Fire, a more insidious disaster—the annual torching of Washington’s vast forests—threatens the region’s economic future.
- A State Representative Takes the Pulpit Against Cigarettes
A Snohomish church hosts a union meeting where a lawmaker decries the 'cigarette habit' as a greater evil than alcohol.
- A Near-Miss Conflagration in Old Seattle
A pre-dawn fire in a Commercial Street smokehouse nearly levels a city block, sparking a call for urban reform.
- The Cigarette Arrest on Third Street
A local tobacconist is hauled before the justice of the peace for selling a single package of cigarettes, sparking claims of a spiteful setup.
- The Smoke Over the Okanogan
Forest fires fueled by arsonists are devastating the landscape and choking the residents of the Okanogan country.
- Fire in the Schoolhouse
A classroom incident in Whitcomb shows the dangers of oil-lamp lighting and heating.