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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1872 | 1 |
| 1876 | 1 |
| 1884 | 1 |
| 1887 | 1 |
| 1889 | 2 |
| 1890 | 1 |
| 1891 | 1 |
| 1892 | 7 |
| 1894 | 7 |
| 1895 | 3 |
| 1899 | 2 |
| 1903 | 1 |
| 1904 | 2 |
| 1909 | 4 |
| 1915 | 2 |
36 stories matching strung
- Power Company Wires Block Ships on Thea Foss Waterway
When high-voltage wires blocked a sailing ship from the city dock, a newspaper reporter dropped the story the moment they learned who owned the infrastructure.
- Eight Sailors Accuse a Chilean Captain of Flogging and Iron-Pin Beatings
At Port Townsend, seamen from the Chilean bark Marguerite told the consulate they were strung up by the wrists and beaten; the captain says passengers caused the trouble.
- The Dynamite Fiend of Oilman: A Lynch Mob’s Tragic Mistake
When a violent feud in King County’s coal fields ended in a massacre, the community turned to vigilante justice. But when they hanged the wrong man, the real killer walked free.
- Vigilante Justice in Okanogan County
A young indigenous man held in the Conconully jail is abducted and lynched by a masked mob, leaving behind a chilling report of frontier lawlessness.
- The Industrial Army Marches Across Washington
Unemployed men, dubbed 'Coxeyites' or 'Industrial Soldiers,' seize freight trains and defy officials in a desperate push toward Washington D.C.
- The Tragic Death of a Devoted Teacher
A Rainier School teacher passes away after a heroic, fatal attempt to shield her students from a schoolroom fire.
- ‘Incipient Treason’: Judge Hanford Sentences the Spokane Strikers
Seven men are jailed for contempt after a mob derails trains and seizes a roundhouse during the 1894 railroad strike. The federal judge calls it insurrection.
- Walla Walla Tells the Gas Company: Put Your Wires Underground — and Pay Up
A 25-year gas and electric franchise goes before the council tonight, rewritten to bury every wire on Main and Alder and to hand the city a grand total of $7,750 by 1928.
- The Great Wire War: How Seattle’s Electric Giants Tried to Buy Their Way Out of the Underground
When the City Council threatened to bury power lines underground, Union Electric and Consumers’ Electric screamed ruin. But the real drama wasn't the wires—it was the council dodging a crowd of gamblers and churchgoers demanding saloon closures.
- The 'Pitiful Hedizzened Hurlots': Seattle's Moral Panic Over the Steamship Brothels
In September 1872, a furious editorial in the *Seattle Daily Intelligencer* condemned the floating red-light districts on Puget Sound, accusing steamship lines of carrying 'pollution and death' to every port while politicians looked away.
- The Hotel Arson Scandal
A bitter divorce case in Gilman turns into a criminal conspiracy mystery after a wife testifies her husband plotted to burn down their own hotel for insurance money.
- The Railway Reaches the Waterfront
New rail lines carve a path through the heart of the city’s industrial waterfront, displacing old businesses and promising a new era of commerce.
- Vigilante Justice on the Monte Cristo Road
After a foreman was killed in a brutal dispute at a railroad camp, the workers took the law into their own hands and lynched four suspects.
- The Chaos of a Contested Election
Pierce County election officials struggle with poorly administered ballots, leaving dozens of precincts disqualified and the fate of legislative seats in limbo.
- Tapping the Source
Tacoma prepares to test new municipal wells to bypass private water monopoly pricing.
- The Shadowed Rooms of Washington Street
A reporter dives into the underground 'stud poker' dens of 1880s Seattle, where railway men and laborers wagered their wages against the house.
- The High Price of Delinquency
An Aberdeen taxpayer exposes how the county's tax collection laws inflate minor debts into heavy penalties for ordinary residents.
- A Ghastly Discovery on the Skykomish River
Two prospectors uncover a human head suspended on a wooden stake in the remote wilderness of King County.
- The Wires That Grew With Seattle
How the Sunset Telephone and Telegraph Company rode Seattle from a forest village to a 25,000-person city — and, when the Great Fire of 1889 burned its plant out of existence, rebuilt the service in tents within ten days.
- Tacoma’s Whitewash That Wasn’t
A public-works president accuses a newly appointed superintendent of dishonesty—then refuses to put the charges in writing.
- A Whole Ox on a 30-Foot Trench: The Butchers' Free Feed for Ten Thousand
Six beeves, sixteen sheep, one ox and 45 boiled hams — roasted overnight over open coals at Madison Street Park and handed out free on pasteboard plates, with a greased pig, a greased pole and dancing until daybreak.
- The Oyster King’s Blueprint: How Connecticut’s ‘Submarine Landlords’ Could Save Washington’s Economy
A visiting shellfish commissioner reveals that state-owned oyster beds create wealthier workers and richer treasuries—a radical land reform idea taking root in Aberdeen.
- A Fifty-Year Franchise for All-Night Power
Officials from the Northern Idaho and Montana Electric Light and Power Co. toured Newport, sketched a town-wide distribution system, and asked the city council for a half-century franchise.
- When Seattle Was Coal Country
A detailed 1895 survey shows King County leading Washington's coal output, with Seattle shipping fuel to California, Oregon, and the Midwest—while labor troubles and spontaneous mine fires shadowed the boom.
- Loggers Used a Dead Man's Skull for a Ball Game — and Wrecked the Only Clue to a Wood Full of Skeletons
A week of horseplay in the timber near Newport has left the coroner unable to explain why one body after another keeps turning up in the same thicket.
Also about this, in other words
- A Wet Rope, a Live Wire, and a Boy on a Bricklaying Crew
Reed Crews was coming down from a tin roof when a wet rope touched a power line. The accident left him dying and exposed the everyday lethality of 1909 work.
- A Live Wire Takes a Trimmer's Foot
An electric-light worker pays a brutal price for a fall across Tacoma's city wires.
- The Copper Wire Bandits
Two ex-linemen were arrested in Tacoma for stealing 5,000 pounds of copper wire from dead poles and selling it.
- A High-Wire Act Above Fourth Street
A building mover narrowly escapes death after being swept off a roof and left dangling from telegraph wires.
- Three Wires Over the Pend Oreille
Newport's phone company suspends steel wire across the river to the Fidelity mill, clearing steamboat stacks by 50 feet.
- Wash Tubs and Tin Cans: A Hover Serenade
When a group of friends arrived to serenade newlyweds in Horse Heaven, they realized they had forgotten their instruments.
- Death on the Wire: The Perilous Walk of Snohomish’s Bridge Builders
While politicians scheme in safe offices, local workers are laying footbridges over the Skykomish River at dizzying heights, performing a feat described as 'the most dangerous part of the grand work.'
- The Perils of Amateur Wiring
A Coulee City man survives a terrifying fall from an electric light pole.