A School Teacher’s Brush with Death in the Skokomish

Lake Cushman—Miss Edith Jefferson, who for the past nine months has been teaching school at Hoodsport, had a very narrow escape from drowning in the swollen waters of the Skokomish. Hiring a saddle-horse in Hoodsport, she rode out to the lake in the early morning. Finding no one at the landing at the end of the road, and being unable to row a boat, she started up the old government trail around the head of the lake for the hotels on the opposite side. Arriving at the river, she rode her horse into the swollen stream at the ford, and, in a moment her mount was seen off its feet and she was thrown into the raging torrent. Through log jams, over sunken logs, and under overhanging trees she was swept for several hundred yards down the stream, and finally dragged herself up the bank by some friendly bushes. After lying on the bank for some time in an exhausted condition, she recovered sufficiently to walk to the nearest farm house, where she was provided with dry clothes, and in the morning returned to Hoodsport. The horse, after being swept down the river, also managed to climb out on the bank, and was found in the woods nearby. The warm weather of the past few days has swollen the river in a manner unprecedented at this season, and the lake is very high in consequence—higher than at any time since the spring of '93.