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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1862 | 1 |
| 1872 | 2 |
| 1876 | 5 |
| 1877 | 9 |
| 1878 | 6 |
| 1882 | 3 |
| 1883 | 3 |
| 1884 | 3 |
| 1885 | 2 |
| 1886 | 2 |
| 1887 | 5 |
| 1888 | 4 |
| 1889 | 16 |
| 1891 | 7 |
| 1892 | 26 |
| 1893 | 18 |
| 1894 | 29 |
| 1895 | 2 |
| 1896 | 1 |
| 1899 | 5 |
| 1900 | 2 |
| 1902 | 1 |
| 1903 | 11 |
| 1904 | 9 |
| 1905 | 1 |
| 1909 | 7 |
| 1910 | 2 |
| 1911 | 2 |
| 1912 | 1 |
| 1914 | 2 |
| 1916 | 4 |
| 1924 | 2 |
193 stories matching straight
- Nightmare at the Notion Store
A shopkeeper narrowly escapes his building as a pre-dawn blaze tears through a landmark business in Walla Walla.
- The Price of a City’s Future: Yesler’s Corner
A single landowner held Seattle’s urban development hostage, forcing the city council to choose between private property rights and the public good.
- The Perpetual-Motion Man Came Downtown Armed
Before Dr. Hannibal Mills shot a man in the Occidental saloon, he told a restaurant waiter he would not live until morning and announced, “I'm God, the devil and himself.”
- A Revolver at the Polls: Seattle’s Republican Primary Erupts
Seattle’s Republican primaries collapsed into shouting, challenged voters, fake tickets and a police chief drawing his revolver to declare the polls open.
- The Murder in the Bunkhouse North of Auburn
A young Japanese labor contractor was beaten and killed as he slept in a cabin on J.W. Nails's farm; a roommate was jailed while blood trails, a loaded musket and an opium pipe deepened the mystery.
- The Beer-Fueled Plot to Steal a Populist Club
Seattle's First Ward Populists packed a hall over John Considine's theater to stop Democrats from capturing their club—and the meeting turned into a brawl of speeches, resignations and accusations.
- 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.
- A Monorail on a 'Bicycle System': The 1892 Plan to Ride One Rail from Seattle to Tacoma
A company promised a thirty-mile elevated railway — cars balanced on a single steel rail, steadied by rubber wheels on an overhead guide — running across the tide flats and reaching Tacoma in forty minutes.
- A Mysterious Cyclone Tears Through the Cascade Mountains
An eye-witness report describes a straight, 40-rod-wide path of destruction cut through the forest near North Bend, leveling timber and blocking mountain roads.
- A Gavel, a Roar, and a Populist Ticket Born in Chaos
King County's People's Party convention at Turner Hall turned into a shouting, proxy-fighting, faction-splitting marathon—and buried Dr. J. Eugene Jordan and Jack McDonald on the way to nominating a ticket.
- The Shadowy Policing of Sumner's Iron Works
Everett labor organizers discover that local police badges were secretly handed out to strikebreakers, sparking a call for commission government.
- The Last Letter From Everett: A Young Printer Vanishes on the Road to Spokane
Elmer H. Rogers told his parents he was headed for Spokane. He never arrived, and his family feared he was killed trying to ride the rails between Seattle and the inland city.
- The 17,000-Acre Land Grab
A federal decision exposes how settlers were misled by illegitimate land claims near Wallula, Washington, setting off a scramble for government property.
- The City Council’s High-Stakes Plumbing Fiasco
When Seattle hired a famed Eastern expert to redesign its city sewers, they ended up with a costly mess of mismatched theories and local engineering rebellion.
- The Ballot Box Tug-of-War
When the right to vote was first won, newly enfranchised women in Seattle faced an immediate, domestic gauntlet of political pressure and neighborhood intrigue.
- The Dolly Varden Ticket: Seattle's 1894 Scheme to Stitch Together a Political Frankenstein
Disgruntled Republicans and Democrats met in downtown Seattle to plan a hybrid 'taxpayers' ticket aimed at beating the regular Republican slate—if they could keep the seams from splitting.
- The Political Pot Boils Over in Seattle
As the municipal election approaches, local factions scramble to assemble winning coalitions and candidates.
- A Railroad Plots Its Path Across the Yakima Reservation
Engineers for the Vancouver, Portland & Northern have staked a route straight through tribal land — and will soon sit down with the Yakima to ask for a right-of-way.
- The Altar Society’s High-Stakes Carnival
Seattle society turned out for a church fundraiser that featured fortune-telling gypsies, a 'fishpond,' and one overly enthusiastic patron who nearly pawned his watch for ice cream.
- The Truck Driver's Long Shift
A local trucker works 24 hours straight to haul apples, highlighting the transition from horse-drawn wagons to the motor age.
- The Day Burrard Inlet Rowed Away With Lake Washington
At the first amateur regatta ever held on Lake Washington, British Columbia crews dominated the junior fours and senior singles while Seattle prepared for its turn on the water.
- The Case for Overalls and Mud
A mother asks for fashion advice for her nine-year-old, prompting a spirited editorial defense of childhood liberty and dirt-stained play.
- City Engineers Map New Path to American Lake
A new diagonal extension of 15th Street aims to bypass dangerous gulches and ridges, creating a direct route for travelers.
- 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.
- The Missing Will That Would Have Given Seattle a Library
Henry Yesler's widow and two doctors are arrested, accused of burning a will that left the pioneer's fortune—and his mansion—to the city.
Also about this, in other words
- The Unkindest Cut
A young boy's poignant question about inclusion and dignity sheds light on the treatment of people with disabilities in our community.
- The Struggle for an Honest Hour: A Farmer’s Grumble in 1888
An account from a local farm near Puyallup reveals the era's persistent struggle to balance agricultural labor with a zero-tolerance policy for drinking, echoing the intense pressure of the frontier economy.
- A Child's Hip Set Without a Knife, the First Time West of the Rockies
Surgeons from across the state crowd a Seattle operating room to watch a Baltimore doctor straighten a two-year-old's dislocated hip by hand.
- The Case for Naming an Olympia Street After Judge Hewitt
A memorial sermon for a territorial judge becomes a plea to carve his name into Olympia's street map—and a meditation on what makes a public life worth remembering.
- The Automatic Suitor-Smacker
A fed-up father builds a booby-trapped gate to drive away his daughters' persistent suitors, turning a domestic headache into a mechanical triumph.
- Predatory Behavior and the Messenger Boys
The arrest of a waiter reveals a pattern of abuse targeting A.D.T. messenger boys in the rooms above downtown saloons.
- The Ethics of Prohibition and the 'Beastly' Public
An editorial critique of a prohibitionist’s sermon that labels the common public as cowardly and corrupt.
- The New Generation Declares Independence
A newly formed political club for young men organizes in Seattle to oppose the influence of established, corrupt political machines.