Squatter Killed in Massive Railroad Slide
A catastrophic hillside failure near Monroe Street buries part of a shantytown; a local man is missing and presumed dead.
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 Gleason, a well-to-do member of the squatters' colony, is believed to have lost his life in a spectacular manner and others had narrow escapes when a section of the O.-W. R. N. big fill, nearly a block long and 200 feet high, slid to the river's edge one-quarter of a mile west of Monroe street, Monday evening.
“A section of the O.-W. R. N. big fill, nearly a block long and 200 feet high, slid to the river's edge.”
This incident highlights the precarious lives of those living on the margins of industrial railroad infrastructure, a common sight in early 20th-century Washington cities. The 'squatters' colonies' of Spokane are long gone, replaced by modern urban development, but the tension between industrial land use and vulnerable residents persists.
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