The Great Yesler Way Runaway
A pair of frightened horses stampede through downtown Seattle, missing pedestrians by mere inches.
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.
At 6 o'clock last evening, a fine pair of gray horses attached to an express wagon came tearing down James Street past Third Avenue. The street was filled with people, and several had hairbreadth escapes from being run over. The team ran down James to Front Street, across to Yesler Avenue, and down that thoroughfare to the building on Yesler’s wharf, where the horses finally stopped. In passing this distance, the team had twenty narrow escapes from collision with brick piles and other teams. Strange to relate, the runaway outfit was not damaged in the slightest degree.
“It missed some of these in some instances by scarcely an inch.”
In 1889, the primary danger to pedestrians in downtown Seattle was a runaway team. Today, the geography remains similar, but the mode of transport and the nature of the 'runaway' have shifted from horses to modern traffic concerns.
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