The Silent Peril in the Cle Elum Mines
A miner dies after consuming water tainted by arsenic in the harsh conditions of the Peshastin mining camp.
George Hoyt, a quartz miner, died at the Peshastin mines yesterday from drinking water impregnated with arsenic. The ground in which he was working is more or less of an arsenical character, and the drift contains a number of springs, the waters of which are cold and agreeable to the taste. The employees are warned, however, not to drink the waters on account of the known poison they contain. The deceased had no relatives here, but it is supposed that he has a brother in the vicinity of Seattle, where Hoyt intimated that he owned considerable property. When the poisoned water took hold of Hoyt he went into convulsions and could not talk, hence the address of his relative could not be learned. Miner friends buried the body here today, and they are anxious to know where his brother resides, in order to turn over the dead man's effects.
“The ground in which he was working is more or less of an arsenical character, and the drift contains a number of springs, the waters of which are cold and agreeable to the taste.”
Mining in the Cascades was often lethal work, not just from cave-ins, but from environmental hazards that were poorly understood or lazily mitigated by operators. The search for the brother of the deceased serves as a haunting reminder of the precarious lives of transient resource workers in Washington's boom-era history.
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