The Great Telegraph Trail Escape
After fleeing the King County jail, two prisoners find that their path to freedom in Mukilteo was blocked by the unforgiving woods and an unexpected encounter with a local resident.
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.
Night before last, a telegram was received here from the telegraph camp between here and Mukilteo, announcing that two of the prisoners who had escaped from the county jail had been seen near that place. Accordingly, yesterday morning, Officer Thorndyke, accompanied by Fred Minick, special deputy, started in pursuit, returning this morning about 10 o'clock with Pat Quinn and Dan Lynch. The prisoners decline, of course, to give any information in regard to their companions, but according to their account, they have had a hard time of it. They state that after getting away on Monday morning, they laid by in the woods in the neighborhood of town for a day and then took through the woods along the brush, bound for Mukilteo. Wednesday afternoon it was raining very hard, and they were obliged to get on the telegraph trail. Scarcely had they done so when they encountered a Mr. Thompson. Knowing after this that it was useless to attempt to get away, as he would undoubtedly give them away, they stopped in the woods in the neighborhood until they were overhauled and captured.
“Knowing after this that it was useless to attempt to get away, as he would undoubtedly give them away, they stopped in the woods in the neighborhood until they were overhauled and captured.”
The 'telegraph trail' between Seattle and Mukilteo represents the rugged, largely untamed landscape that once defined travel in the Pacific Northwest. Today, that route is largely replaced by the I-5 corridor, turning a multi-day escape through dense brush into a drive of less than an hour.
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