The Ghost of Old Town's Gulch
A man's decomposed body is found in a desolate ravine near Old Town, accompanied by a revolver and a notebook from Minnesota.
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.
While looking over land in the vicinity of Old Town yesterday, Mr. M. O. Mellinger found the decomposed body of a man. There was a bullet hole in his forehead and on the ground close to the body was found a 32-caliber revolver with one chamber empty. In a notebook found on the body was the name, J. G. Nelson, and the address, 'Warren, Minn.' Other papers on the body indicate that the man had probably been a farmer and stock raiser. The body was that of a man about 50 years of age, with gray hair and mustache. Judging from the condition of the body, it had been lying there about a month or six weeks. The body was found in a deep gulch near the corner of North 29th and Steele Streets. It is a most lonely and desolate neighborhood. The place is overgrown with underbrush and there are no houses within several blocks. A better place for a suicide or murder, even, would be hard to find.
“The place is overgrown with underbrush and there are no houses within several blocks. A better place for a suicide or murder, even, would be hard to find.”
While Old Town was the original heartbeat of Tacoma, the wilderness that existed between its established homes and the surrounding woods has since been entirely built over. Finding a body in a 'deep gulch' near today's North 29th Street serves as a reminder of how quickly the urban grid conquered the rugged topography of early Tacoma.
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