Explosion at the Stump
A teamster's narrow escape after a misfired blast in his land-clearing efforts.
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 man named J. Taylor, a teamster who resides on the line of the old railroad track, while engaged in clearing land, put a blast into a stump and tamped it with a plug. For some reason the blast did not explode, and Mr. Taylor went up to see what was the matter. Just as he stepped down to pull out the plug, the blast exploded, knocking the man senseless. He was taken home in a fearfully bruised condition, being injured from his feet to his head. While his wounds are not necessarily fatal, they are severe and painful. At last accounts the unfortunate man was resting easily.
“Just as he stepped down to pull out the plug, the blast exploded, knocking the man senseless.”
Clearing land with heavy explosives was a common, dangerous reality for early settlers in the Pacific Northwest as they literally blasted the forest away to make room for the city's expansion.
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