Nine Hundred Sheep Lost in Canyon Tragedy
A massive herding disaster in the Yakima territory leaves nearly a thousand sheep dead in a canyon.
Mr. Alexander, from Oregon, who passed through this county last week with 10,000 head of fine mutton sheep for the Sound market, met with quite a misfortune at the head of Bowman creek. There was a small canyon ahead of the band which the herders did not see, and when the front sheep came to it the rear ones pushed them ahead until there was a bridge formed with the struggling and dying leaders. The rest of the band passed over, and when the herders arrived they found 900 dead and dying sheep.
“The rear ones pushed them ahead until there was a bridge formed with the struggling and dying leaders.”
The massive loss of livestock in an unmapped canyon speaks to the brutal realities of the early cattle and sheep drives that defined the Yakima Valley's landscape and economy before modern mapping and fencing.
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