The Olympia Bear Escape
A dangerous confrontation unfolds in Olympia when an employee of the local power company is mauled while attempting to recapture escaped bears.
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.
Olympia, May 11.—Arthur Dye, an employee of the Olympia Light & Power Company, had a narrow escape from death while endeavoring to recapture a bear which had escaped from the park. Two of the bears escaped, and one of them seized Mr. Dye by the leg and started to worry him. K. F. Nichols, night watchman for the Northern Pacific, ran to Mr. Dye's assistance, and was himself severely bitten. The bear then made for the woods, but was afterwards shot.
“One of them seized Mr. Dye by the leg and started to worry him.”
Local news in the early 1900s often featured 'man vs. beast' stories that highlight the proximity of urban development to the wild, a dynamic that persists today in the Pacific Northwest as cities expand into habitat zones.
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