The Unexploded Bomb in the Hillside
A curious fragment of Civil War history turns up on Sixth Street, linking Seattle’s quiet streets to the violent Indian Wars of the past.
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 SOILDER'S RELIC OF WAR.—As we were pacing along Sixth street, near the corner of Terrace, Saturday morning, we observed a rusted metallic substance sticking out of the hillside, which on unearthing, proved to be a geologic fragment of a bomb-shell, probably one of those thrown by the Decatur during the Indian fight on the morning of Jan 26th, 1856. It was in the same vicinity that the unexploded bomb was dug out of the ground by Mr. Thornton a few months ago.
Seattle’s early history is often sanitized as a story of peaceful logging and trade, but this snippet reminds us that the city sits on land contested during the Puget Sound War of 1855-56. The 'Decatur' was a U.S. Navy sloop-of-war involved in those conflicts; finding its ordnance in a residential hillside today serves as a stark reminder that modern neighborhoods were once active military zones.
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