A Fortune Arrives Too Late for Tunnel Foreman
N. Wickstrom, a careful and sober tunnel foreman, was crushed by falling rock at Blueslide — on the same day a letter told him a long-awaited court judgment had come through.
N. Wickstrom, foreman of tunnel No. 1 on the extension of the Idaho & Washington Northern, was killed while working at Blueslide on Saturday night last. While working in the tunnel a large mass of rock and earth gave way and fell upon Wickstrom, crushing his head and body in a fearful manner. He never recovered consciousness and died the same night before medical assistance could reach him.
Wickstrom had been in the employ of Grant Smith & Co., the contractors on the tunnel and extension, for a little more than a month. He was considered a first-class man, being sober and careful in his work. He came to Blueslide from Spokane, where he had been making his headquarters since coming west from Minneapolis, his former home. He was about 50 years of age and unmarried.
On the day of his death he had received a letter from his attorneys in Minneapolis, informing him that the supreme court of Minnesota had affirmed a judgment in his favor for the amount of $1,300 in a case in which he was interested, and that the money would be ready for him within a few weeks.
Wickstrom was a native of Sweden and had no relatives in this portion of the country. He was a member of the Foresters' lodge and it is understood that he carried some insurance in that order.
The body was brought to Newport by Justice Long, who acted as coroner in the case, and taken to Miller's undertaking parlors. The body will be taken to Spokane for burial.
The coroner found that neither the company, the deceased nor any of his fellow workmen were to blame for the accident.
“On the day of his death he had received a letter from his attorneys in Minneapolis, informing him that the supreme court of Minnesota had affirmed a judgment in his favor for the amount of $1,300.”
Tunnel and construction work in the Northwest has always been dangerous, and a foreman's death on a rail-extension job was counted a routine cost of progress. The brutal irony — an inheritance confirmed the very day he died — gives one anonymous laborer a name and a story that the ledger otherwise erases.
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