Tragedy at Artondale: A Worker Maimed by Dynamite
A laborer near Tacoma is left sightless and near death after a stump-clearing accident goes wrong.
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.
A horrible accident occurred at Artondale, about eight miles west of Tacoma, yesterday evening. Chas. Meyers, a workman in the employ of John D. Evans, was engaged in blowing up stumps with giant powder and dynamite. He placed the charge underneath a stump, connected it with a fuse, and set it off. Meyers was filling the last stump with powder and was tamping the charge with an iron bar when, by all accounts, the bar must have struck fire, igniting the powder. The blast threw Meyers about twenty feet, putting out both of his eyes, cutting his face and head, and horribly mangling his whole body. His cries for help brought neighbors to the scene, where he was found partially buried in the earth, blood flowing from his terrible gashes. He was conveyed to a hospital in Tacoma, where he remains, it is feared, with his eyesight lost forever.
“He is at present remaining, moaning for someone to kill him.”
This incident captures the extreme physical danger inherent in the early land-clearing efforts that shaped the Puget Sound region. While modern land development has traded dynamite for heavy machinery, the precarious nature of laboring on the frontier remains a part of Seattle's foundation story.
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