Tragedy at the Trestle
A three-year-old girl wanders away from playmates and drowns in a pond near the railroad tracks.
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.
Last Saturday, little Dell, the three-year-old daughter of W. C. Johnson, went up toward the trestle with several children to gather flowers. After an hour or two she told her playmates she was going home, and left them. It seems, however, that on separating she wandered back to one of the deep ponds by the track. It is supposed she was attracted by the pond lilies which grew in profusion over the surface, and in attempting to gather some, got into the water and met her sad fate. As she had not reached home at noon, her parents became alarmed, and on making a search, found her lifeless body about one o'clock. Every effort was made by Messrs. Johnson and Burch to resuscitate her, but it was too late. The stricken parents are bowed with grief.
“It is supposed she was attracted by the pond lilies which grew in profusion over the surface, and in attempting to gather some, got into the water and met her sad fate.”
Accidents involving children and infrastructure were a grimly common feature of 19th-century reporting, often framed through the lens of parental 'alarm.' Today, this story serves as a reminder of the industrial hazards that occupied the edges of early Seattle's residential life.
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