A House Lifted Off Its Foundations and Floated Out Into the Lake
After five days of rain, Lake Cushman rose to record heights — eight feet deep on the hotel floor — and carried one man's house bodily across the clearing into the water.
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.
Lake Cushman, Jan. 16. Special.—The storm which began on the night of the 7th and ended on the 15th has been the most severe this locality has ever experienced. The snow was about three feet deep and a thick sheet of ice covered the lake. Five days of incessant rain accompanied by a chinook raised the water in the lake to a point never before reached. It reached its highest point on the 13th, when the water stood nearly eight feet deep on the floor of the Cushman House. About noon on that day the house of W. B. Late floated down the river into the lake. The river had cut away the ground from beneath it, and it was then lifted bodily from its foundations and washed across the clearing and out into the lake. It is now tied up opposite Cape Hays' place. Capt. Hays moved as much of his provisions, etc., as he could get together in the time allowed him and camped on the mountain behind his house. On the Putnam ranch no damage was done beyond the loss of some few rods of fence and some tools. W. L. Butler and L. Muller lost young orchards. Mr. Butler a very fine one, the trees being several years old and bearing. The river rushing over them washed them out by the roots. At the Faust place the river broke from its accustomed channel and cut a bed for itself to the south of the house and completely demolished the trail at this point. H. Hanson, who has had some experience with floods, fed his chickens and left the farm for a neighbor's who lives on higher land. He suffered no loss beyond some fencing. At the mining camp the river cut through a point of land round which it used to flow, carrying huge trees, rocks, etc., with it, leaving the old bed of the stream several hundred yards from its present course.
No news has yet been received from the ranches lower on the river, but they must have suffered, as the water here was about two feet higher than that of January 13, the highest ever known. Much anxiety is felt here for the county road to Hoodsport, and the mail today is eagerly looked for. The snow is still two feet deep and much ice is in the lake, but a channel has been cut through it and is being kept open by the settlers.
“The river had cut away the ground from beneath it, and it was then lifted bodily from its foundations and washed across the clearing and out into the lake.”
The Kitsap and Olympic peninsulas still flood when a warm chinook dumps rain onto deep snow, and Lake Cushman — now a reservoir behind a dam — is still the community's weather gauge. Settlers here measured the deluge not in cubic feet but in how deep the water stood on the hotel floor, and by whether a neighbor's house had floated off its foundation. It is the same anxious waiting for word from the lower river, and the same relief when the mail finally gets through.
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