The Perilous Slopes of Columbia Street
A teenage student’s sledding accident sparks a local warning about the dangers of winter recreation on Seattle’s steepest hills.
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.
While coasting down Columbia street, last evening, Mott Willard, a boy aged about fifteen years, met with a painful accident. The hill is quite steep, and the track very smooth, and consequently a sled would go down at lightning speed. When near Second street, Mott steered to the side to let a person pass, when his sled struck a lamp post, against which he was violently thrown. His companions picked him up and took him to the residence of Was Meydenbauer. All kinds of reports were circulated, the saddest of which was that the boy had broken his neck, but on examination it was found that his forearm was fractured just above the wrist, and his head was badly bruised. The fractured limb was soon properly set, and he was able to walk to his boarding house. Mott is one of the University students, and son of Dr. Rufus Willard. He will be able to resume his studies again in a few weeks if nothing unforeseen happens.
“The hill is quite steep, and the track very smooth, and consequently a sled would go down at lightning speed.”
The steep, icy streets of 1880s Seattle were clearly as treacherous for youth then as the city's topography remains today. While modern Seattle has traded wooden sleds for cars and replaced gas lamps with LED poles, the geography of downtown’s historic hills still presents a perennial winter hazard for residents.
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