The Rainy Retreat from Alki Point
A summer of relentless Seattle showers turns the city's camping enthusiasts into a 'bedraggled and disheartened' crowd.
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.
The rainy weather is doing a big piece of work on the campers at Alki Point and the other resorts around the sound. At first, many of the outing enthusiasts thought that the showers were only summer affairs, and they took supplies for sun-skies and butterflies. But as one weeping day has passed away only to be followed by another, the campers' spirits have dropped. Hundreds have finally dug in their heels and are returning to the city, a bedraggled and disheartened crowd.
At the West Seattle ferry slip, a very ludicrous sight is presented when the boat arrives from the other side. Numerous persons laden with damp camp equipment and accompanied by individuals who look as though they had seen better days, come into view. The crowd of onlookers feels the pathetic character of the sight but, strange to say, drop no words of commiseration. Even at the resorts, the weather has been decidedly damp and chilly, and the tents are rapidly disappearing, although a few determined persons insist that they will 'stick it out' and are still expecting to be rewarded by a period of fair, cold weather.
“Numerous persons laden with damp camp equipment and accompanied by individuals who look as though they had seen better days, come into view.”
More than a century later, the 'Seattle Freeze' and the city's infamous damp weather still define the local experience, transforming even the most optimistic summer plans into soggy, bedraggled reality. The enduring humor found in this 1899 dispatch shows that while the city has grown, the struggle to find a dry tent-site on a grey weekend remains a quintessential local rite of passage.
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