The River's Mystery
A young businesswoman visiting her family in Aberdeen vanishes while rowing alone on the Wishkah River, sparking a frantic and desperate search.
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.
Monday morning, a boat was found drifting in the Wishkah River at Tongue Point. Inside the boat was one oar, a woman's hat, and a cloak. Inquiry developed the fact that Miss Ella Beardsley had been rowing on the river and was missing. Beardsley's friends had arranged for a boat ride at 9 a.m., but for some reason, Miss Beardsley got up early in the morning, secured a boat from Boatman Lyle, and started up the river alone. She was last seen by L. I. Stiles, who teaches school at Layportes, when she was fiddling with one oar and was bare-headed. The woods along the river's bank have been thoroughly searched, the river has been dragged, and dynamite exploded where it is thought she might have been drowned, but with no success. Miss Beardsley was employed by a firm in Portland, and in addition to their office work, had been studying very hard. She arrived here Saturday to visit her parents. Accompanied by Dr. G. G. Eitel of Phillipsburg, Montana, they had become engaged on Sunday. Miss Beardsley was known as an exceedingly fine businesswoman and had previously managed the Bee Hive store in Centralia. Her disappearance remains a mystery.
“Her disappearance is one of the mysteries time may or may never solve.”
The Wishkah River remains a central, sometimes treacherous, landmark in Aberdeen. The methods of searching in 1892—dragging the river and using dynamite to bring bodies to the surface—highlight the desperate and primitive nature of search-and-rescue operations of the era.
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