The Logger Who Wrestled a Bear
A local timber worker narrowly escapes death after stumbling into a den and fighting a brown bear for fifteen minutes with an axe.
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.
John Smith and Harry Norberg, loggers employed near Shelton, arrived in the city recently. Smith is bandaged up around the head, his left arm in a sling, and he walks with a limp—a physical testament to a brutal encounter with a bear. While slashing underbrush, Smith stepped onto a large log to get a better view of the terrain. He slipped and fell, landing directly upon a brown bear hidden beneath the log and brush. The bear immediately struck Smith a terrible blow to the cheek, knocking him down. Smith regained his footing and grabbed his axe, which had fallen nearby. The ensuing struggle lasted for about fifteen minutes, with both the man and the animal becoming severely exhausted. Smith managed to bury his axe into the bear’s ribs four times before a final, well-directed blow to the creature's head ended the conflict. Smith’s shoulder, hip, face, and neck were badly torn by claws, but he survived the encounter.
“The fight that followed between the sturdy logger and his four footed opponent was terrible.”
This harrowing account of a logger battling a bear captures the raw, dangerous reality of 19th-century timber work in the Pacific Northwest. While the industry has shifted from individual bush-slashing to mechanized forest management, the peril of working in remote, untamed backcountry remains a timeless Washington theme.
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