Tragedy on the Skagit
A young worker loses his life in a whirlpool while attempting to transport shingle bolts downriver.
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.
Charles Vanderford, a young man resident of Sauk City, started from Marble Mount, where he had been tasking shingle bolts, on a raft. About two miles below his starting point his raft entered a whirlpool in the Skagit river, and in trying to get ashore he was drowned. Two squaws went to the rescue, but could not save the unfortunate young man. He was a son of the secretary of the Sauk City Land Company. The recent freshets have cleaned the river of logs, and the loggers will now be able to realize on their summer labor.
“About two miles below his starting point his raft entered a whirlpool in the Skagit river, and in trying to get ashore he was drowned.”
Logging was the lifeblood of the Pacific Northwest economy, but it was a profession defined by extreme danger and vulnerability to the whims of the environment. This brief, tragic report highlights the real, human cost of the industrial labor that built Washington's cities.
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