The Sabotage of Black Lake

Union Pacific officials have been notified of a malicious attempt to drain Black lake, two miles south of Olympia, by aid of the old Union Pacific grade. Had the efforts proved successful a body of water two-thirds of a mile long, half a mile wide and from twenty-five to thirty feet deep would have flooded the surrounding country, doing hundreds of thousands of dollars damage. The lake is now under guard of a deputy appointed by the county commissioners. When the Union Pacific built its roadbed by the lake it constructed a dyke on the west side to protect the county road, as well as railroad property. Someone maliciously cut a hole in the dyke, which blew away, letting the entire body of water against the county road, forty feet wide, and the only means of retaining the water in the lake. Adjacent property owners have discovered where the work of destruction was further carried on by the use of a well auger, with which a hole a foot wide had been bored under the roadbed for a distance of ten feet. Timely discovery prevented further prosecution of the work and obviated a flood, which would necessarily have resulted had the entire body of water thus been turned loose. The natural course of the water would have been down Deschutes river, endangering the Olympia electric light plant, grist mills and dwellings, as well as the bridges along the course of the river.