Tragedy on the Skagit River
A pioneer family's desperate journey to Mount Vernon ends in a fatal accident on the river.
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.
John Walker, who settled above Hardview a year ago, was drowned last Wednesday by the overturning of his canoe. Himself, wife and three daughters were in the canoe with some luggage, on their way to Mount Vernon, intending to go to Port Townsend. When they were near Deerer’s Island, above Cape Horn, a swirler struck the canoe, upsetting it. A daughter being swept away from the canoe, he swam out to her and carried her within reach of the shore, but his strength gave out and he was drowned. The entire community sympathizes deeply with his afflicted family in their mourning for the husband and father who died for them.
“A daughter being swept away from the canoe, he swam out to her and carried her within reach of the shore, but his strength gave out and he was drowned.”
The Skagit River remains a treacherous waterway, and this account highlights the immense physical risks taken by early 1880s settlers navigating the rural Pacific Northwest without modern infrastructure. The tragic sacrifice of John Walker mirrors the often-unrecorded human toll of westward expansion.
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