A New Baseball Diamond for Aberdeen
Local boosters and baseball enthusiasts secure a level site near a local hotel to keep the game alive in the face of land ownership disputes.
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.
Local ball players and members of the townsite company met in the office of Hasbrouck last evening to talk about the proposed new site for a ball field. A location was selected just south of Yana's hotel, and east of Peter's dwelling, where the ground is almost perfectly level. The former grounds could not be secured because of some defect in the title of the land. A backstop and stand will be built at once, and the grounds put in prime condition for the first game of a series between Montesano, Aberdeen and Cosmopolis to be played a week from next Sunday.
“The former grounds could not be secured because of some defect in the title of the land.”
The struggle to secure permanent public space for recreation versus shifting land titles was a hallmark of the 1890s 'boom and bust' cycle. Modern Aberdeen continues to grapple with land use and the privatization of space, though the stakes have shifted from baseball fields to housing and commercial development.
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