The Tragic Fall at the Bluff
A prominent former judge meets a fatal end after a night-time misstep in early Seattle.
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.
On the night of December 30th, J. D. O'Brien, late Clerk of the Courts of California and ex-Superior Judge of San Francisco County, was killed by a fall from the steep bluffs in Seattle. His body was discovered with the skull crushed. He had apparently been disoriented by the darkness, walked off the bluff, and fallen thirty feet to his death. His death was a shock to the community and a tragic reminder of the treacherous, unlit landscape of the growing city at the time.
“The arrival of the horses home caused a search to be instituted, with the result that his dead body was discovered.”
This 1885 tragedy speaks to the 'unforgiving geography' of early Seattle, where rapid development often outpaced basic civic safety. Today, while we have tamed those bluffs with retaining walls and concrete, the tension between Seattle’s steep, challenging terrain and the pace of urban growth remains a constant theme in local development.
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