The Mystery of the Fremont Drowning
A witness reports hearing a desperate cry for help near the old boathouse, but the lake surface holds no answers.
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.
A telephone message was received at police headquarters last evening from Capt. Barr, at Fremont, stating that a man was drowned in Lake Union about dark, but his body had not been recovered and his identity was unknown. J. W. Keiger was walking along the Fremont boulevard and when at the point where the old boathouse, recently burned, stood he heard a splashing in the water, followed by the cry: 'Help! Save me! I'm drowning!' Keiger climbed down under the bridge, but all was quiet. The waters did not show any signs of disturbance and no hat floated about to betray the fact that some unfortunate had fallen in. The case was reported to Capt. Barr, who is investigating.
“The waters did not show any signs of disturbance and no hat floated about to betray the fact that some unfortunate had fallen in.”
Lake Union was once the industrial and maritime heart of the city, and reports of accidents in these cold waters were frequent in the 1890s. Today, while the lake is a bustling hub of modern recreation and tech campuses, it remains a place where the city's past and present literally overlap.
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