Zoe Gayton Bets the World She Can Walk It — Then Cheats at the First Tunnel
A week out of Seattle on her round-the-world wager, the pedestrian record-breaker was told she could not walk the two miles of the Northern Pacific's Stampede Tunnel. A locomotive pulled up. Everybody swore secrecy. A newspaper man heard anyway.
Zoe Gayton, the round-the-world walker, has already broken the conditions of her wager, and the agreement was made only a short time after leaving this city a week ago Sunday. When the record-breaker reached Stampede tunnel, on the Northern Pacific railroad just beyond South Prairie, she learned to her surprise that no one was allowed to walk through the tunnel, a distance of two miles, and that if she intended to walk she would have to take the other route over the mountains. That route is especially difficult, and it is thirty-five miles from one side to the other. The temptation to take a "lift" was too great.
As Miss Gayton and her companions stood debating the matter, a locomotive drove up and stopped, and it was only a few minutes until an arrangement was made for her to ride through the tunnel, thereby saving thirty-two miles and a hard climb. Of course everybody was sworn to secrecy, but it happened that a newspaper man heard of the proceedings. If Miss Gayton has made the wager, the money is forfeit.
“Of course everybody was sworn to secrecy, but it happened that a newspaper man heard of the proceedings. If Miss Gayton has made the wager, the money is forfeit.”
Endurance stunts are older than the sponsorship deal, and so is the small print that undoes them: Gayton's wager died two miles into the Cascade mountains, not on some far continent. Any modern reader of a record-attempt scandal — a runner cutting a course, a round-the-world sailor accepting a tow — is reading the same story. Stampede Tunnel is still there under the pass, and the train still does the walking.
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