The Lost Cattle of Miller’s Saloon
A local farmer turns to the public in an 1877 notice to recover three cows lost in the woods near the edge of town.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
STRAYED: From the premises of the undersigned, four weeks since, three cows. One is a red cow, about four years old; the other two are red and white, and three years old. The red cow and one of the spotted ones have the top of the left ear cut off straight, and the other one has the right ear cropped. A suitable reward will be paid for their return, or for information as to their whereabouts. WM. ZINKAM, at Miller’s Saloon, Seattle, W.T., Jan. 20, 1877.
“A suitable reward will be paid for their return, or for information as to their whereabouts.”
In 1877, Seattle was a frontier town where livestock wandered the outskirts and a local saloon served as the community's primary message board. Today, while the cows are long gone, the struggle to find and secure property—and the reliance on public forums to track what is missing—remains a persistent, if digitally transformed, feature of urban life.
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