The Railway Party’s Near-Drowning in the Yakima River
A VIP delegation touring irrigation infrastructure narrowly escapes disaster when their wagon team bolts into a deep river slough.
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.
President Oakes and his party, under the pilotage of Paul Schulse, arrived in Yakima on Saturday on a special train from Tacoma. The party inspected the irrigation dam and headgates at Union Gap before traveling toward Toppenish. On the way, they encountered a swollen slough. Ladies and some gentlemen crossed by boat, but four men attempted the crossing in a heavy brace wagon. The lead horses balked, the team panicked, and the wagon headed into deep water. While most escaped, editor E. V. Smalley was carried under. A company employee, A. Brown, saved Smalley by pulling him toward a boat as he surfaced for the last time. Mr. Smalley later remarked that he had been near death when his hands touched a horse’s ear, which allowed him to stay afloat. President Oakes subsequently sent a substantial reward to Mr. Brown for his heroism.
“Editor Smalley, who is a portly gentleman, staid with the wagon as long as he could and then he was carried under.”
Infrastructure tours remain a fixture of Yakima politics, though usually with less risk of drowning. The irrigation projects they were inspecting at the time would go on to permanently alter the landscape and economy of the Yakima Valley.
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