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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1854 | 1 |
| 1858 | 1 |
| 1860 | 1 |
| 1861 | 1 |
| 1862 | 2 |
| 1871 | 1 |
| 1872 | 1 |
| 1876 | 33 |
| 1877 | 20 |
| 1878 | 28 |
| 1879 | 2 |
| 1880 | 7 |
| 1882 | 7 |
| 1883 | 27 |
| 1884 | 19 |
| 1885 | 22 |
| 1886 | 13 |
| 1887 | 15 |
| 1888 | 33 |
| 1889 | 44 |
| 1890 | 3 |
| 1891 | 55 |
| 1892 | 84 |
| 1893 | 88 |
| 1894 | 84 |
| 1895 | 109 |
| 1898 | 11 |
| 1899 | 22 |
| 1900 | 4 |
| 1903 | 33 |
| 1904 | 35 |
| 1905 | 3 |
| 1907 | 2 |
| 1908 | 9 |
| 1909 | 51 |
| 1910 | 5 |
| 1911 | 5 |
| 1912 | 4 |
| 1914 | 8 |
| 1915 | 5 |
| 1916 | 20 |
| 1917 | 6 |
| 1918 | 3 |
| 1923 | 4 |
| 1924 | 4 |
| 1925 | 2 |
937 stories matching worth
- The Sea Captain’s Return to Seattle
After surviving a shipwreck, an opium smuggling trial, and years of exile, a seasoned mariner decides he is done running and returns to Seattle to settle his debts.
- The Winnifred Burns: A Lake Washington Steamer Lost at the Dock
An early-morning fire at Leech's Dock destroyed the Newcastle-run steamer Winnifred, a wharf and a boardinghouse, exposing how much of Seattle still depended on borrowed hose and luck.
- At 99, She Goes Back to Court: The Rent Is Hers, and the Agents Are at Her Door
Mary Steele already won a decree and the income from a $45,000 property portfolio stretching from Yesler Avenue to Kansas City. Now she says her husband's agents are pocketing the rents, selling her furniture and trying to put her out of her own house.
- The Year Palouse Horses Were Worth Less Than Hog Feed
With Eastern markets closed and thousands of horses starving on overgrazed range, Whitman County farmers began eyeing their herds as pork feed.
- The Price of a 'Sharp Practice'
An early Tacoma settler recounts how a handshake deal for a town site—and his trust in corporate promises—cost him a half-million-dollar fortune.
- The 'Gold Brick' King: How a Master Con Man Sold Copper to a Banker
A too-trusting Aberdeen banker, a man disguised as an Indian, and a forged letter from the San Francisco mint—the Seattle trial of the notorious swindler 'Rebel George' Knowlton.
- The High Cost of Borrowing in Territorial Olympia
An indignant citizen writes to the editor to protest the predatory lending practices bankrupting the territory's early settlers.
- The Confidence Man of the Colonial Hotel
A prolific hotel thief, captured in Minneapolis with $12,000 in diamonds, claims he offloaded stolen jewels in Tacoma, Seattle, and Spokane.
- The Wig and the Wire: How a Tacoma Newspaper Owner Tried to Destroy a Judge
In the sensational Wickersham trial of 1889, prosecutor R.P. Radebaugh’s own past and his alleged conspiracy to frame Judge Wickersham for 'immorality' were laid bare in court.
- The $8,000 Schoolyard Fight
A losing contractor accuses Seattle’s school board of steering a South School grounds contract to a favored bidder and wasting taxpayer money. The board fires back that the cheapest bids were unsafe and that a $25,000 schoolhouse was at risk of falling.
- Railroad's Right-of-Way Bill Comes Back at $6,000
A Colville jury rejects a $30,000-an-acre claim from the old Jordan cement plant and hands the Idaho Washington Northern a costly but smaller condemnation verdict.
- Bertha Jarvis Wants Out
A widow who remarried in Renton in 1885 asks a Seattle court for divorce and a share of the property, cataloguing years of abuse, thrown food and threats against her children.
- The Taxpayers' League vs. The Railroads: A Battle for Fair Valuation in Columbia County
In May 1903, local citizens and tax experts challenged the massive capitalization of the Oregon Railway Navigation Company, arguing that its true value warranted a higher tax assessment to fund public services.
- When Eggs Became Legal Tender: How the Palouse Survived the Panic of 1893
After the rains wrecked the 1893 wheat crop and merchants slammed shut the credit system, Palouse farmers discovered that the hen — and then the hog — could save them.
- A Doctor Traded His Drugstore for a ‘Level Bottom’ That Wasn’t
Dr. Van Dyke sued R. K. Latimer, claiming a Green River land swap was built on false promises about acreage worth far less than the store.
- Judge Glasgow Fines Lake Washington's Beer Sellers by the Barrel
Saloon keepers at Madrona Park and the Madison Street pavilion plead guilty, and the police court scales fines to their liquor bills.
- The Gold That Wasn't There: How Speculators Tried to Mine Their Way Into a Public School Section
A Tacoma hardware merchant swore a state school tract was rich placer ground. The state bored over a thousand feet of shafting, found less than a cent of gold per yard, and still had to fight to keep its own land.
- From Two Rooms to a Building Fund: The YMCA’s Early Expansion in Seattle
Three years after arriving in Seattle, Secretary George Carter reflects on the YMCA’s transformation from a struggling group in a pair of rented rooms to a city institution with grand building ambitions.
- The Price of Public Health in 1892
A saloon owner sues the City of Seattle after a smallpox quarantine destroys his business and stock.
- The Baptist Mission Boom of 1884
A report on the rapid expansion of Baptist missions, church building, and church membership in Washington Territory.
- The Great Puyallup Potato Feud
A minor dispute over five trespassing pigs and a potato patch escalates from a neighborhood grievance to the Pierce County Superior Court.
- The Night a Streetcar Powerhouse Fire Left Half of Seattle Dark
A pre-dawn blaze at Fifth and Pine gutted the Consolidated Street Railway plant, destroyed nearly all its cars and dynamos, crippled three lines, and blacked out everything north of Pike Street.
- The Battle for Elliott Bay
A railroad company is eyeing a constitutional clause to claim millions in tide lands, but the public says the water belongs to the people.
- The Brutal Toll of the Great Northern Expansion
Snow-shovelers strike for higher wages while workers battle five-foot drifts and constant mountain slides to complete the transcontinental link.
- A Devastating Betrayal in Marriage
An elderly woman sues for divorce and the recovery of her property after her husband allegedly swindled her and threatened her life.
Also about this, in other words
- The Gold Rush Under Your Feet
A sewer excavation in a fashionable Spokane district unearths gold-bearing ore worth $2,000 a ton.
- The Great Greenback Tug-of-War
A Seattle reader squares off against national editors over the power of the government to define the value of money itself.
- The Judge's Cruel Calculus
A Seattle widow’s quest for justice in court meets a cold, misogynistic dismissal from the bench.
- Bankruptcy and Backpay
- The True Cost of Living
A haunting poem from the era exposes the impossibility of supporting a family on a mill worker's starvation wage.
- The Price of a Life: Labor Fights Back Against Dangerous Legislation
Organized labor in Everett rallies against a proposed senate bill that would cap death and injury payouts for workers at $5,000.
- The Price of Sin in Pioneer Seattle
While the city's elite debated municipal elections and infrastructure, a thief made off with a trunk full of coins and jewelry from a house on the margins of society.
- A Gold Rush on Silver Creek
A spectacular assay of ore has ignited a fever of excitement in Snohomish.