The Mud of the Highlands
Melting snows leave Kennewick rural routes impassable, forcing students to crawl over dangerous flumes to get home.
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.
The recent thaw has damaged all the Highlands roads to some extent, but the roads where there are hills or draws have been eroded to such an extent as to be almost impassable. The hill east of the Gray ranch is particularly bad, the soil being entirely washed away, exposing great boulders. Both bus and mail routes cover some badly washed road; the Lundberg bus was mired, the horses getting down and being so badly entangled one evening as to necessitate cutting the harness. The children were obliged to walk home, one little boy having to crawl along a high flume over a draw where the water was coming down like a mill race to reach home. Many of the children have been absent from school on account of being unable to get through the mud and water to the places where they meet their buses.
“One little boy having to crawl along a high flume over a draw where the water was coming down like a mill race to reach home.”
Early 20th-century life in the Highlands was dictated by the volatile nature of unpaved, hilly terrain during the thaw. Today, while roads are paved, the underlying topography and the challenges of rural connectivity in Kennewick’s fringe areas remain a constant topic of infrastructure planning.
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