The River’s Toll on the Timber Trade
A sudden freshet on the White River washes away over 150,000 feet of logs, devastating local lumber operators and scattering timber as far as Smith’s Cove.
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.
From the appearance of the bay yesterday we infer that the White River must have taken another sudden rise on Saturday. The water of the entire bay was thickly impregnated with mud, and fresh muddy water could be observed about the wharves as it floated over the surface of the bay. Some of the mischief done by this heavy current, which came rushing down the river, inundating the bottoms, was the breaking of booms. Nearly every logger up that valley has lost considerably in this way. Among them, probably Mr. Smith, of Cedar River, is the chief loser. Two booms from his place were picked up yesterday by the cutter and taken into Colman’s mill. One was taken on the Duwamish, and the other had drifted away down to Smith’s Cove before it was secured. This person, we are informed, has lost altogether about 150,000 feet of logs which he will not recover. Mr. McAllister is the next heaviest loser, having lost quite an amount of maple and ash logs, besides being put to considerable expense in recovering drift logs.
“The water of the entire bay was thickly impregnated with mud, and fresh muddy water could be observed about the wharves.”
The vulnerability of Seattle’s early logging industry to unpredictable river flooding echoes modern environmental concerns and the ongoing struggle to manage the Duwamish and White River corridors, where seasonal inundation and infrastructure damage remain constant pressures.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.