The Deadly Slide at Coal Creek
Tragedy strikes a mining camp as a massive snow slide buries cabins and claims lives, leaving families in mourning and survivors in constant fear.
The snow slides in the Cascades continue with terrible frequency. Yesterday, the death of Bert Trescott, Richard Aris, and John White, who were working on the Northern Pacific Railroad, was reported. Two men were spinning their wheels as if they were safe. They got into their cabin and laughed and saw the slide, and in an instant the cabin and all were obliterated in a sea of snow. The situation of the slide is such that the passengers were buried in the earth, and they considered it certain death to dig. The last three fatal slides in the mountains in about thirty deaths since last Saturday evening. It is reported that a man named McCauley, on the south side of Alta, was killed Friday by a slide, and nothing has been heard or seen of him since.
“They got into their cabin and laughed and saw the slide, and in an instant the cabin and all were obliterated in a sea of snow.”
The volatile, high-stakes nature of the Cascade Mountains remains a dangerous neighbor to Seattle's infrastructure. While 1885 saw workers buried in primitive rail camps, modern travelers still face similar, albeit better-monitored, threats from slides that routinely shutter mountain passes during the winter months.
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