The Great White Bluffs Dog Panic of 1907
A stray cur triggered a frantic scramble for safety, sending townspeople up ridge poles and onto the riverboats.
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.
A mad dog scare created a furor in town last Sunday afternoon. An ill-bred cur came out of the sagebrush and immediately began cutting up antics which caused wonderment among the dog population and fear among the citizens. That pup sailed up and down Walnut street at a terrific gait, his tail aloft and his fangs bared for action. Frank Hutt, the restaurant man, shied a biscuit at the roving canine and missed him. F. B. Smith skinned up a ridge pole in the Oasis tent, Irving Wright climbed aboard the Delta May and put out to sea, and Contractor Max Priebe escaped by clambering on top of a new building. Mr. Waitbie hunted up Harry Kennedy and Kennedy shot the dog.
“F. B. Smith skinned up a ridge pole in the Oasis tent, Irving Wright climbed aboard the Delta May and put out to sea, and Contractor Max Priebe escaped by clambering on top of a new building.”
White Bluffs was famously cleared of all human inhabitants by the federal government in the 1940s to make way for the Hanford Nuclear Site. Today, the townsite where citizens once scrambled onto riverboats to escape a stray dog is part of a restricted, post-industrial landscape, serving as a reminder of how quickly a civic footprint can be erased.
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