The River's Secret: Eli Anderson's Last Celebration
Eli Anderson, a shift boss on the tunnel, disappeared after a night of celebration. Months later, his body surfaced near Blueslide—and the mystery only deepened.
Tuesday afternoon a rancher living about a mile and a half below Blueslide discovered a body floating in the Pend Oreille River. He recovered the body from the stream, and tying it up to the shore made known his discovery to the authorities.
Dr. J. T. Phillips and Justice J. H. Long went to Blueslide Wednesday to hold an inquest. Although badly decomposed, the body was readily identified as Eli Anderson, shift boss on the tunnel work for Grant Smith & Co., who disappeared on the night of June 21. There had been suspicions of foul play connected with the disappearance of Anderson, but Dr. Phillips, after a thorough post-mortem examination, found nothing to warrant the belief that the man had been foully dealt with, except the possibility that he might have been thrown into the river. Justice Long authorized burial at Blueslide.
On his person were found a pocket knife and $2.05 in coin. Letters among his effects at the camp show that he was a married man, his wife residing at Hummelgard, Finland.
The night of Anderson's disappearance the workmen were celebrating the connection of the workings on the upper level of the tunnel. Anderson, who had been working on the job since its beginning, and had drawn but a few dollars of his wages, drew and joined in the celebration. The next morning he was missing, and it was thought for a time that he had been murdered by some workman with whom he had trouble. The river was dragged and dynamite was used without effect. The men working on the tunnel have since dispersed and the mystery of his death will perhaps never be solved.
“The river was dragged and dynamite was used without effect. The men working on the tunnel have since dispersed and the mystery of his death will perhaps never be solved.”
More than a century later, the Pend Oreille River still swallows secrets, but Anderson's case echoes how transient labor—especially immigrant workers—could vanish with little more than a coroner's inquest. His wife in Finland waited for letters that never came, a reminder of the human cost of the region's tunnel-and-dam boom.
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