The Great Tidal Wave Prank of 1893
A fake official weather warning triggers panic and sends nervous citizens scurrying to the hills of Aberdeen.
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.
Some person, intent upon a joke at the expense of the public, on Monday, sent an apparent official message from Signal Officer Pague, of Portland, to the Board of Trade of this city, stating that the coasts of Oregon and Washington would be visited by a tidal wave between 1 and 3 p.m. The appearance of the sky being very threatening at that time, quite a number of the more gullible citizens were ready to take to the hills. A copy of the supposed official message was forwarded to Hoquiam, and one of her prominent citizens, fitted out with a pair of field glasses and a red flag, hastened to the top of Heerman's hill to give warning to the town of its impending inundation, at the first appearance of the monster.
“The appearance of the sky being very threatening at that time, quite a number of the more gullible citizens were ready to take to the hills.”
In an era before mass digital disinformation, this prank demonstrates how swiftly misinformation could travel through local social networks to incite genuine panic. Today, the geography of Hoquiam's 'Heerman's Hill' remains, but our public trust and the mechanisms we use to verify disasters have shifted from field glasses to instant smartphone alerts.
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