A Runaway Team Smashes into Downtown Tacoma
A delivery driver narrowly cheats death after his team bolts down Ninth Street, leaving a trail of destruction at the Tacoma Bazaar.
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.
I. McCrimmon, driver of an express wagon, had a narrow escape from serious injury, if not instant death, in a runaway this morning on Ninth street. He was driving down the hill with a team and heavy covered wagon, and when near C street, some of the reins caught under the tongue and the team took to a run. They came down the hill with almost the speed of an express train. Seeing that he could not stop them, McCrimmon jumped from the wagon just as it reached C street, and fortunately, landed without injury, though he struck the pavement with a good deal of force. Just as he jumped the team swerved to the right and an instant later struck the mailbox on the corner of Ninth and C. Both mailboxes were broken and bent so that they will have to be replaced. The wagon turned over on its side across the walk, with the back end in the doorway of the Tacoma Bazaar. The tongue snapped off short and the front of the wagon was smashed. One of the horses had a tooth knocked out and its tongue cut, but the other escaped without injury. Had McCrimmon delayed his jumping an instant, he would have in all probability been a dead man.
“They came down the hill with almost the speed of an express train.”
Ninth and C Street remains a busy downtown intersection today. While teams and wagons have long been replaced by vehicles, the risk of a runaway incident in Tacoma's steep topography remains a familiar, if modernized, civic hazard.
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