Vanishing Landscape of the Everett Massacre

By Feliks Banel, KSL Podcasts

In an old mill town on Puget Sound north of Seattle, a stretch of brick road is crossed by a vintage railroad bridge. It’s the only part of the landscape in Everett, Washington that remains unchanged from one of the darkest days in the city’s history more than 100 years ago.

“I can’t think of anywhere else in the city where any other brick street part or portion might still survive,” said local historian Neil Anderson. “It’s the last, and a lot of history walked over those bricks for the last 100 and some years.”

A BNSF Railway locomotive crosses the 1910 railroad bridge, part of the last remaining landscape unchanged since the Everett Massacre of November 5, 1916. (Feliks Banel)

The roadway and bridge, at the west end of Hewitt Avenue just north of the old Everett railroad depot, function as an unintentional frame containing a view of Everett’s working waterfront – in particular, the section of the harbor where a pier called City Dock once stood.

The Everett Massacre

It was on City Dock and in the waters just west of it where gunfire erupted between law enforcement on shore and labor activists aboard two steam vessels.

It’s unclear who fired first, but when it was all over, the so-called Everett Massacre of November 5, 1916 had claimed the lives of at least seven men. The event was one of many in the Pacific Northwest from the late 19th century to the early 20th century, when labor and management clashed, often with deadly result.

In that era, Sheriff Don McRae amassed what’s been called a private army – hundreds of civilian men from a business club who were deputized and armed in order to tamp down labor activism, and even just plain free speech, in Everett.

On the day of the Everett Massacre and moments before the shooting started, those deputies – and anyone else tagging along or otherwise taking part in the public demonstrations that day – had just marched down Hewitt Avenue, their feet drumming on the old bricks – the same ones which remain in place there today – and the tops of their heads clearing the steel trusses of the old bridge, which also, remarkably, still stands unchanged and in place.

“It became a real wound in Everett,” said lifelong Everett resident, local historian and Anderson’s friend Jack O’Donnell. The Everett Massacre “was one of those things that people in the city would not speak about for years.”

A composite of two Sanborn maps shows the location of City Dock (left) where the Everett Massacre took place, and the spot where a brick-paved road (Hewitt Avenue) crosses under a railroad bridge. (Maps courtesy of Everett Public Library)

“Everett was a real mill town at that time,” O’Donnell continued, as he stood on the old brick road and took in the view to the west, framed by the bridge. “There were so many mills that became highly unionized, and there were a lot of real skilled workers like the shingle weavers, and they were having a strike.”

Wobblies Join The Strike

It was that strike which ultimately led to members of Industrial Workers of the World – known as the “IWW” or “Wobblies” – coming to Everett in 1916 to take part in public speaking events at the corner of Hewitt Avenue and Wetmore Street, about five blocks from the brick roadway and railroad bridge. The Wobblies came to town with the intention of speaking in public and being arrested for doing so, and then being jailed – in hopes of clogging the jail and defeating Everett’s efforts to stifle free speech. A similar thing had happened on the other side of the state in Spokane in 1909, and the Wobblies had claimed victory.

On October 30, 1916, a large group of Wobblies came to Everett, anticipating arrest. Instead, the 41 men were savagely beaten and run out of town by Sheriff Don McRae and dozens of his deputies. The union men were not arrested or charged with a crime, and there was no due process – only knocked out teeth, dislocated bones, and internal injuries from blows and kicks rained down on the men.

The two boats of Wobblies heading north from Seattle to Everett on the morning November 5 were going back in search of vengeance.

“So when the VERONA, the first of the two vessels, came in, they said ‘You can’t disembark here,’” O’Donnell recounted, describing what Sheriff McRae shouted at the Wobblies trying to land at City Dock.

“And they said ‘The hell we can’t,’” O’Donnell continued, repeating what the Wobblies reportedly told Sheriff McRae. “At some point, a shot was fired because both sides were armed.”

The gunfire didn’t last long, but two deputies were fatally wounded on shore. On the VERONA, five men died, but more may have fallen over the side and drowned – though no additional bodies were ever recovered, and no men were reported missing.

A wide angle view of the unchanged roadway and 1910 railroad overpass which comprise the only unchanged landscape from the Everett Massacre. (Photo by Ken Zick)

Will the Landscape and Viewscape Survive?

The landscape in question, perhaps other than the street and sidewalk right-of-way running beneath the bridge, belongs to BNSF Railway.

Railroad officials are planning replace the aging bridge, which dates back to 1910, with an earthen berm. This would mean filling in the area beneath the bridge and eliminating the historic landscape where Everett Massacre participants marched down Hewitt Avenue to meet the boats full of labor activists. Tracks over the current vintage bridge carry BNSF freight trains and local commuter trains.

Plans for altering the historic landscape are a joint effort of BNSF Railway and the City of Everett. In an email, city of Everett spokesperson Simone Tarver shared some of the project details.

The park is “being paid for and built by BNSF,” Tarver wrote.” Parks (officially, Everett Parks and Facilities) has been working closely with BNSF on the design.”

It’s unclear from Tarver’s email if the historic significance of the hardscape of the bricks where participants marched and of the so- called “viewscape” which retains its 1916 look (and which frames the view of the site where the Everett Massacre took place) were taken into consideration at any point so far in public or private discussions related to the design of the berm. This possible significance is likely to come up when the project and any necessary permits are reviewed in a process mandated by the State of Washington.

For those who believe preservation of places where difficult parts of history happened is key to never forgetting the lessons taught by that difficult history, there may still be time to convince BNSF Railway and the City of Everett that bricks and railroad bridge – the only remaining landscape from the Everett Massacre – is worth saving.

Otherwise, the landscape, like the history of the Everett Massacre itself, will simply vanish.

“Not very many people have heard about the Everett Massacre,” said Neil Anderson. “And when you start digging into the history, a lot of people have no clue of where that event took place.”

Forgotten Airship SHENANDOAH

By Feliks Banel, KSL Podcasts

To hear author Ian Ross tell it, when the U.S. Navy airship Shenandoah crashed in September 1925, it was unlike any aviation tragedy before or since.

“It hit extreme turbulence over Ohio and broke into basically three pieces,” Ross said. “And the control car, with most of the officers, dropped away and fell to earth and killed everybody [inside].”

“The upper section broke into two pieces, and both of those pieces floated to earth,” Ross continued. “The rear section floated down and dragged across, and most of the people that were in that section survived.”

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the Navy explored and experimented with so-called “lighter-than-air” aviation through balloons as well as rigid-framed airships filled with helium, including the Shenandoah and three other craft.

“In order to test this theory of long-distance flight for a dirigible, they set up a planned trip to come up here [from Lakehurst, New Jersey] to Seattle by way of Fort Worth and San Diego,” aviation historian Lee Corbin said.

Airships require specific infrastructure much different from what fixed-wing, heavier-than-air craft (that is, airplanes) need, Corbin explained.

The airship mooring mast and maintenance building at JBLM stood for a decade, from the late 1920s to the late 1930s; it was used only once. (Photo courtesy Lee Corbin)

“So they built three different mooring masts,” Corbin continued, explaining that a mooring mast is a tall column designed to secure the nose of the airship and to supply things like water, electricity and fuel.

The Navy built “one down in Fort Worth, which I think now is a parking lot for a warehouse down there,” he said. “And they built one at what’s now called North Island Naval Air Station [near San Diego].”

“I’m pretty sure that one is gone because of all the construction [from] when they were building the airfields,” Corbin said.

“But interestingly enough, the one that was built at [what was then known as] Camp Lewis is now on a portion of McChord Air Force Base,” Corbin continued. “And it’s out in an area that was left undeveloped all these years.”

Corbin was able to investigate what remains of the mooring mast. “There’s actually still a foundation down there,” Corbin said, and “if you know where to look you can find it.”

Lee Corbin (LEFT) and Shawn Murphy examine the concrete remnants of the airship mooring mast at JBLM. (Photo by Feliks Banel)

Photos that Corbin took show the concrete footings of the mast and guy wires, as well as remains of the foundation of the shed built to service airships. LiDAR images that Corbin tracked down in public online databases show the remains of a track built in a huge circle around the mast. He says this track was constructed sometime in the 1930s to accommodate a heavily weighted vehicle to serve as additional mooring connection for airships even bigger than the Shenandoah, though no other airship ever did visit.

LiDAR image found in a public database by Lee Corbin reveals landscape alterations made for the airship track at what’s now JBLM in the 1930s. The huge circular track was created for a heavy car – which would be connected to the stern of the airship via a mooring line. The track was never used. (Courtesy of Lee Corbin)

“The mooring mast was only used once” for the one-day visit of Shenandoah in October 1924, Corbin said.

In Corbin’s research, he also discovered that a man from Seattle named Roland G. Mayer served as an officer on the Shenandoah. Mayer survived the 1925 crash, and is credited with helping others also make it through alive.

Roland G. Mayer (first row, second from right) was First Lieutenant aboard the airship LOS ANGELES in 1928. (Photo courtesy National Air and Space Museum)

Mayer went on to serve aboard the Navy airship Los Angeles, and also flew aboard the Navy’s other two lighter-than-air giants the Akron and the Macon. Mayer was at Lakehurst, New Jersey the day after the Hindenburg disaster in May 1937, and took part in the Navy’s initial investigation into the crash.

“He also was a glider pilot . . . [and he had a] glider license, actually, that was signed by Orville Wright,” said Mayer’s grandson Kevin Vogel. “So that will give you an idea of how long ago he was involved in all of this.”

Vogel says America’s “lighter-than-air” aviators have been mostly forgotten by history, as has the original military purposes of airships – to patrol the oceans for enemy ships and serve as skyborne aircraft carriers. This eventually proved impractical, dangerous and often deadly.

“Basically, he was a keel officer of the Shenandoah and he was responsible for the engineering aspects of the ship,” Vogel said. “Anything that happened to that ship, if there was a motor that went out or something like that, he was responsible for getting the guys together to get it working again. That’s what he did.”

Lee Corbin says that Mayer graduated from the University of Washington in 1917 with an engineering degree. This led directly to a job for Mayer and two classmates. Their employer was the airplane company that had been launched just one year earlier by Bill Boeing.

The job with Boeing didn’t last for Mayer, but it turns out he was in pretty good company with the other two classmates who did stick around.

“What’s interesting is the three names” of the UW graduates who went to work for Boeing in 1917, Corbin said. “Mayer was one of them, Claire Egtvedt was the other, and [the other one was] named Phillip G. Johnson.”

Incredibly, Egtvedt and Johnson would each go on to high-level leadership positions at Boeing.

“So there’s no telling what Mayer would’ve done” if he’d stayed with what became an aerospace giant, Corbin said.

But Mayer had other plans. Corbin says Roland Mayer worked at Boeing only for a few weeks before heading east to work as an engineer for the Navy in Philadelphia and to help design and build the Shenandoah.

Ultimately, airships did not prove to be a safe and reliable form of travel. It was less than a year after the Shenandoah visited Camp Lewis when the ship met its untimely end in a thunderstorm over the Buckeye State.

For the six crew members in the front section – the section where Roland Mayer also found himself – it was a little more complicated.

“I personally believe very strongly that [Roland Mayer] played a vital role in the survival of that front section,” author Ian Ross said.

When the ship broke apart, the front section floated free and gained altitude, and the men aboard had to pilot it as if it were, essentially, a rudderless balloon.

Rigid airships were ultimately made obsolete by advances in fixed-wing, heavier-than-air aviation, and the loss of the Shenandoah – along with several other high-profile deadly disasters – didn’t do much to promote their viability.

Along with the Hindenburg crash in May 1937, two additional Navy airships were destroyed in storm-related crashes in the 1930s. The Akron crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 1933 killing 73, and then the Macon crashed off the coast of California in 1935 killing two. Still, during World War II, the U.S. Navy used dozens of smaller, non-rigid inflatable blimps for patrol and reconnaissance.

In the aftermath of the HINDENBURG disaster in May 1937, Seattleite Roland G. Mayer (CENTER) served on a panel that conducted a brief investigation of the tragedy at Lakehurst, New Jersey. (Courtesy Dan Grossman)

Though his airship days were over by the late 1930s, Roland Mayer spent several more years in aviation, eventually running Convair’s plant in Fort Worth, Texas where B-24 Liberator bombers were manufactured during World War II.

After the war, Mayer retired, and he and his wife bought a ranch north of Fort Worth. Grandson Kevin Vogel says that Mayer didn’t dwell on his airship exploits.

“It’s not like he had mementos all around the house of his Navy days, not at all,” Vogel said. “It was like he had moved on.”

Though he was an early Boeing employee, aviation pioneer, Navy veteran, hero of the American airship era, and builder of World War II bombers, Roland G. Mayer left all that behind for pursuits much closer to the ground.

“He would’ve been perfectly happy if he had died on his tractor, out in the field tilling the soil,” Vogel said.

The airship mooring mast and maintenance building are long-gone from JBLM, but concrete chunks of footings and foundations of the forgotten structures remain. (Courtesy Lee Corbin)

The Deadly Voyages of Captain Jonathan Thorn

By Feliks Banel, KSL Podcasts

On March 22, 1811, the American barque (or small ship) “Tonquin” – 96 feet long, built in New York in 1807 – sailed into view of the mouth of the great River of the West, also known as the mighty Columbia.

The Tonquin sought shelter in Baker Bay, on the north (or Washington state) side of the Columbia River, near what’s now the community of Chinook, Washington. (Feliks Banel photo)

This was about five years after American explorers Lewis & Clark had wintered near the Columbia on the Pacific Coast in what’s now Oregon and Washington. One of the concepts the duo’s Corps of Discovery brought to the attention of American entrepreneurs was the notion of profiting from trading furs, collected on the Northwest Coast, with merchants in China.

McAndrew Burns, executive director of the Clatsop County Historical Society in Astoria, OR, pictured behind the historic Flavel House, which is maintained by the society. (Feliks Banel photo)

John Jacob Astor’s Pacific Fur Company

Thus, on board the Tonquin was a group of aspiring fur traders known as the Pacific Fur Company, a business venture financed by American entrepreneur John Jacob Astor. The objective was to establish a post (which they called “Astoria”) and begin trading with Indigenous people to collect furs to export to the Far East. British ventures known as the Hudson’s Bay Company and Northwest Company were already doing the same, mixing commerce with Great Britain’s political interest in claiming the Northwest Coast for the crown.

An image of Jonathan Thorn, on display at the Clatsop County Historical Museum in Astoria, Oregon. (Feliks Banel photo)

The man hired by Astor to take charge of the ship was a strict disciplinarian. His name was Captain Jonathan Thorn, and his character had become clear not long after the Tonquin left New York the previous September and sailed around Cape Horn, and then to the Northwest Coast by way of Hawaii.

Thorn was a former U.S. Navy officer, but the clerks and partners of the Pacific Fur Company aboard the ship weren’t willing to being ordered around as if they were midshipmen or even officers. There may have been anger-management issues, too; Captain Thorn clearly had a short temper.

Astoria, Oregon is popular tourist destination at the mouth of the Columbia River; in 1811, it was home to one of the earliest non-Native settlements in what’s now the Pacific Northwest. (Feliks Banel photo)

Graveyard of the Pacific

The arrival of the Tonquin at the mouth of the river meant crossing the treacherous Columbia Bar, an area which later came to be known as the “Graveyard of the Pacific.” The Tonquin’s attempted crossing proved deadly to a number of crew members, mostly due to Captain Thorn’s impatience and poor judgement. Unfortunately, the violence and death that resulted from Thorn’s leadership during the ship’s arrival proved to be something of a foreshadowing of what was to come just a few months later.

A re-creation and monument to Fort Astoria stands just off a main road on a hillside on the edge of what’s now downtown Astoria, Oregon. (Feliks Banel photo)

When Captain Thorn’s career came to an abrupt and deadly end on the coast of what’s now British Columbia in June 1811, an estimated 100 others died along with him. Though many have searched, the exact place of the disaster has never been identified, and the Tonquin has never been found.

The fur traders left behind at Astoria didn’t make out so well, either. When the War of 1812 broke out between the United States and the British, Astor’s managers ultimately sold Astoria to the Northwest Company rather than face potential attack by the Royal Navy. Still, when Royal Navy Captain William Black arrived at Astoria sometime after the sale, he insisted on formally occupying the stockade and acting out a performative “capture” of it for King George – even though a British company had already bought it from the Americans.

Bizarre Twist Helps Secure the Old Oregon Country for the United States

Later, in a bizarre twist because of provisions laid out in the 1814 Treaty of Ghent, Captain Black’s actions came back to bite Great Britain. The treaty formally ended hostilities between the U.S. and Great Britain, and required the British to return all captured territory. When Captain Black acted out the fake surrender and seizure of Astoria, the land comprising the Old Oregon Country – most of what’s now Washington, Oregon, Idaho and British Columbia – had not formally claimed by any country, so the faux capture and forced return helped bolster American claims. In the decades of complicated diplomatic wrangling that followed, Captain Black’s bogus taking of Astoria ultimately only strengthened American claims. In 1846 when the land was formally divided and the international boundary drawn some 250 miles north of the Columbia River, the American share of the Old Oregon Country was far greater than Great Britain had ever imagined.

Forgotten Jetliner Crash in Boeing’s Backyard

By Feliks Banel, KSL Podcasts

“I had my two-year-old son and my wife, and we hopped in the car and went up Highway 99,” said Ron Palmer, a retired man who lives near Seattle. “ I was on swing shift at Boeing, and I just had to see it.”

What Ron Palmer had to see was the aftermath of the crash of a brand-new Boeing 707 jetliner. The aircraft, which was being used to train airline pilots, had gone down north of Seattle late one autumn afternoon in 1959.

Ron went to see the crash site, and he brought his camera along.

Visiting The Crash Site The Next Day

“I was fortunate to walk right up to the river’s edge,” Palmer said. “It was on a kind of a berm or a dike or something. I stood there and took some pictures with my little camera. I don’t think I was there more than 10 minutes.” 

A photo of the wreckage of the Boeing 707 the day after the jetliner crashed along the Stillaguamish River, taken by Ron Palmer on October 20, 1959. This photo was taken from just north of the highway, as Mr. Palmer first came upon the crash scene. (Courtesy Ron Palmer)

More than 65 years later, Ron Palmer’s photos of the crash are a stark reminder of what remains an unusual disaster and outlier in aviation history: the only time a Boeing jetliner has crashed in the aerospace manufacturer’s home state of Washington.

A recent view looking south from State Route 530, taken from approximately the same spot where Ron Palmer took a photo of the crashed Boeing 707 the day after it went down along the Stillaguamish River. (Feliks Banel photo)

A Routine Training Flight

The Boeing 707 jetliner took off that day from Boeing Field in Seattle for what was supposed to be a routine training flight. On board were four employees of Braniff Airlines, a representative from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and three men who worked for Boeing, the manufacturer of the jetliner.   

It wasn’t too much later, somewhere in the skies high above rural Snohomish County, when something went terribly wrong. A Braniff pilot named Jack Berke, who was learning how to operate the new jet, lost control during what should have been an uneventful procedure: recovering from a “Dutch Roll.”

Boeing 707 jetliner N7071, seen in happier times in a photo shoot for Braniff Airlines; though the plane was destroyed in a crash in October 1959, this image of it was used in Braniff marketing for several years. (Courtesy Feliks Banel)

Within moments of Berke’s misstep, three of the 707’s four engines were torn from its wings, and the jetliner caught fire. In the cockpit, a Boeing pilot named Russ Baum struggled to regain control and to aim the jet toward Paine Field in nearby Everett, Wash. for an emergency landing. 

But the jetliner was losing altitude too fast. Within a few minutes, the 707 crash-landed along the bank of the Stillaguamish River a few miles west of the small town of Oso, Wash. The forward section of the aircraft was crushed on impact and burst into flames.  Four men, including the Boeing and Braniff pilots, died in the cockpit; four other men on board who had moved to the rear and braced for impact miraculously survived.

The forward section of the Boeing 707 was badly damaged by the crash and fire, and the four men in the cockpit died. (Courtesy Ron Palmer)

Unfortunately, the crash of the Braniff Airlines 707 didn’t have to happen. Investigators later determined that a Boeing pilot – whose job was to teach the Braniff pilots about the plane – broke the rules about how to administer the Dutch Roll exercise, and also didn’t properly instruct the Braniff pilots on the steps required to properly recover from the maneuver. These two factors led directly to the loss of the plane.

“Oh boy. Here we go.”

Albert “Pete” Krause was a flight engineer for Braniff. He on board the 707 that day, in the cockpit, observing from a jumpseat at the back, when everything went wrong.

“Jack Berke was a good guy, but he just, I don’t know,” Krause said. “I saw that left knee go down [on the control pedal], and I thought, ‘Oh boy. Here we go.’”

Pete Krause and three others survived the crash; Jack Berke, Russ Baum and two others did not.

“[The crash] broke my back, and I still have a lot of back problems,” Krause said, “but I was able to finish my career flying, and the good Lord has smiled on me. I’m a happy camper.”

Deadly Crash a “Sad and Extraordinary Footnote”

The Boeing 707 is one of the most consequential aircraft ever designed and built by the aerospace giant, but its success wasn’t necessarily a given when the first prototype was revealed in a public “rollout” ceremony in 1954. From the time it went into service in 1959, other 707s crashed around the United States and in other parts of the world, often killing many passengers and crew members on board.

The Stillaguamish, perhaps half a mile upriver from the site of the October 19, 1959 Boeing 707 crash. (Feliks Banel photo)

Still, though only four men died, the October 1959 crash – in Boeing’s backyard – remains a sad and extraordinary footnote in aerospace history and Pacific Northwest history.

The Search for The Cayuse Five

By Feliks Banel, KSL Podcasts

November 29, 1847 was one of the darkest days in Pacific Northwest history. Presbyterian missionaries Marcus and Narcissa Whitman and 11 others who lived with them at their mission near what’s now Walla Walla died in an attack by members of the Cayuse tribe.

The Cayuse War

In the aftermath, American settlers and the U.S. Army launched a series of attacks that came to be known as the Cayuse War. Soon after that, Congress acted to designate Oregon Territory, comprising most of what’s now Oregon, Idaho and Washington, an official part of the United States, following a long delay.

Oregon City and Willamette Falls as they appeared in 1867, nearly 20 years after the Cayuse Five were tried, convicted and executed. (Courtesy Oregon Historical Society Research Library, Carleton Watkins, Org. lot 93, 414)

In 1850, five Cayuse men were taken into custody for the Whitman murders and charged in the death of Marcus Whitman. After a brief trial, the men were convicted and then hanged at the old territorial capital of Oregon City, some 250 miles from the Cayuse homeland. What happened to the bodies of the “Cayuse Five” after the execution is not clear.

National Park Service Director has ‘Personal Connection’

“I have a strong personal connection,” said Charles Sams, former communications director for the Confederate Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and now director of the National Park Service. “My sixth-generation great-grandmother, who was married to a non-Indian, was the godmother to the Cayuse Five.”

“I think she had every intent as a Cayuse tribal member hoping to see that they would at least be sent home after they had been hung,” Sams continued. “And probably was very disappointed that they weren’t, because she knew the cultural significance of being placed back among the bones of your ancestors.”

Sketch of Whitman Mission by Paul Kane, circa 1846 or roughly a year before Marcus Whitman and 12 others died there. (Courtesy Oregon Historical Society, from Thomas Vaughan, ed., “Paul Kane, The Columbia Wanderer: Sketches, Paintings, and Comment, 1846-1847,” Oregon Historical Society Press, 1971, p. 16.)

The story of the Whitman Mission and the Cayuse is violent and complicated, even before the deaths there in November 1847. More than 170 years later, there are no clear-cut heroes or villains.

Forging Alliances in Search of the Cayuse Five

However, in recent years, Cayuse tribal members and officials with the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (of which the Cayuse are a part), have been searching for healing and closure – and for justice – by working to locate the remains of the Cayuse Five and bring them home to Eastern Oregon. In this work, they have formed partnerships with academic researchers at the University of Oregon, and with elected officials in Oregon City.

Willamette Falls in Oregon City, OR as viewed from the bluffs where a monument was recently dedicated in memory of the Cayuse Five. (Feliks Banel photo)

Dedicating a Monument ‘Better Late Than Never’

One result of this new effort is that a monument was recently dedicated in Oregon City to commemorate the anniversary of the hanging, and to put down a permanent marker – when none had ever stood before – in tribute to the five Cayuse men who died there.

“It’s better late than never,” said Oregon City Mayor Denyse McGriff. “Oregon City has stepped up. We are sorry. We’re very deeply sorry,” Mayor McGriff continued. “And so this is really meaningful that we can come together as people to say something really bad happened.”

Teara Farrow Ferman is cultural resources manager for the tribe and a tribal member, and she took part in the recent dedication of the monument in Oregon City. She said the search is not so much about justice as it is about healing, and about making sure that the Cayuse Five know that they are still remembered.

A monument to the Cayuse Five was dedicated in their memory on the bluffs above the Willamette River in Oregon City, OR in June 2024. (Feliks Banel photo)

“Just our presence in the area singing their songs, saying their names, us remembering them,” Farrow Ferman said, “they will hear that [and] they will know that we are going to continue looking for them.”

As the search for the graves of the Cayuse Five goes on – through archival records, old diaries, vintage maps as well as occasional field visits to investigate possible sites in Oregon City – Teara Farrow Ferman believes the search alone is a powerful thing, regardless of what the ultimate result might be.

“That’s healing for us,” Farrow Ferman said. “And I think it’s healing for them as well, to know that we haven’t forgotten them.”

Have You Seen The Phantom Ship?

By Feliks Banel, KSL Podcasts

Have You Seen The Phantom Ship? That’s what the front page of the Sunday magazine in a Seattle newspaper said on January 30, 1910.  The headline was accompanied by a line drawing of two men in a small, open boat.  In the distance, a large steamship floats on the calm waters.  Bearing down on the men is a ghostly, vaporous hull of an unidentified vessel.

The story relates the tale that in the previous year, several mariners had reported seeing a “phantom ship” in the waters off the west coast of Vancouver Island near the lighthouse at Pachena Point, and they also reportedly could “vaguely see human forms clinging to her masts and rigging.”

To many the “phantom” looked a lot like a ship called the Valencia, what some would come to regard as the “Titanic of the West Coast.”  And those “human forms” looked a lot like the countless women and children who had clung to the masts and rigging in the Valenica’s infamous final moments.

The steamer Valencia, which ran aground and broke up on a reef on the west coast of Vancouver Island in January 1906. (US government photo)

The Valencia was a 252-foot long passenger steamer owned by the Pacific Coast Steamship Company, an enterprise that moved people and freight between the Sand Francisco Bay Area and the Pacific Northwest starting in the late 1800s.  The ship had been on its way from San Francisco to Victoria, British Columbia and then Seattle when it ran aground late southeast of Bamfield, British Columbia on the stormy night of Monday, January 22, 1906.

“He hit a rock”

Captain Oscar Johnson was in command of the vessel.

“He hit a rock,” said the late maritime historian and author David Grover.  “And that rock was only about a quarter mile off the coast of Vancouver Island,” Grover continued. “He had overshot the entrance to the Strait that far.”

A man in his twenties named Frank Lehn, who was freight clerk aboard the Valencia and who survived the wreck, later told an inquiry panel what he had witnessed.

“The ship began to break up almost at once, and the women and children were lashed to the rigging, above the reach of the sea,” Lehn told investigators.  “It was a pitiful sight to see frail women, wearing only night dresses, with bare feet, on the freezing ratlines, trying to shield children in their arms from the icy wind and rain.”

“Screams of women and children mingled in an awful chorus with the shrieking of the wind, the dash of the rain, and the roar of the breakers,” Lehn continued.  “As the passengers rushed on deck, they were carried away in bunches by the huge waves that seemed as high as the ship’s mastheads.”

A monument in Seattle’s Mount Pleasant Cemetery marks the place where 13 unidentified victims of the Valencia tragedy are entombed. (Feliks Banel photo)

Tragedy Begets Myths and Spooky Stories

After a horrific day and a half of failed rescue attempts and heavy weather, the Valencia broke apart and sank just off shore around midday on Wednesday, January 24, 1906.  Only 37 men survived.  All told, at least 117 people died, including all the women and children who were aboard. Victims were eventually recovered from the sea and from the shore. Many were never identified and were buried in mass graves in Victoria and Seattle.

With such a great loss of life, it’s not unusual that a lot of spooky stories about the Valencia circulated in the days, months and even decades after it was lost.

Nameplate from the Valencia lifeboat discovered nearly 30 years after the wreck. (Courtesy BC Maritime Museum)

Rumors of a lifeboat full of skeletons in a cave, and reports of sightings of the phantom ship repeatedly running aground helped make the legend grow in the months and years after the tragedy. The shocking discovery of a relic from the Valencia nearly three decades after the wreck cemented the ship’s dramatic loss permanently into Pacific maritime mythology.

Silver Lining

Though the loss of the Valencia was a tragedy, it was not without a silver lining.

Clay Evans of Victoria, BC knows his Valencia history. Evans has served as interim CEO of the Maritime Museum of BC, and he spent nearly 20 years of his career with the Canadian Coast Guard stationed in Bamfield, BC near where the ship was lost.

Evans says that major infrastructure for the Canadian Coast Guard and the U.S. Coast Guard was created on both sides of the Strait of Juan de Fuca as a direct result of the disaster.

A vintage nautical chart of Georgia Strait and Strait of Juan de Fuca is annotated to show location where the Valencia ran aground on Vancouver Island. (NOAA Archives)

“If there’s any enduring positive legacy, the tragedy did lead to the establishment of a life-saving station at Waadah Island which became Neah Bay, which still exists today” on the American side. Evans said.  “And, of course, the life-saving station at Bamfield and other ones on the west coast of Vancouver Island, too.”

Closure

By Feliks Banel, KSL Podcasts

When Private Bruce Barrowman boarded Flight 293, he was just 17 years old. Bruce’s loss has haunted his younger brother Greg for decades. At times, Greg has struggled to make sense of what happened, and to find some way to commemorate Bruce and the other 100 passengers and crew who were lost.

Through years of grief and sometimes anger and frustration, Greg repeatedly asked the military to search for the wreckage to find for answers to the big questions about what went wrong and why the DC-7C went down in the Gulf of Alaska. At the same time, the Barrowmans also did what they could to memorialize Bruce and never forget his sacrifice – and theirs, too.

Personal Monuments to Hidden Grief

As Greg began connecting with other Flight 293 families, he learned that many have been trying to do exactly the same thing. Like the Barrowmans, many families felt abandoned by the US government. They hunted online for information about the flight, and some also built private monuments to their lost loved ones alongside their family homes, complete with plaques and flagpoles.

The private monument dedicated by Bruce Barrowman’s family in their front yard not long after Flight 293 went down in 1963. (Courtesy Greg Barrowman)

With help from many of those Flight 293 families and from an informal network of aviation and military historians and others simply interested righting a decades-old wrong, Greg Barrowman led an effort to publicly commemorate the loss of those aboard, and to finally dedicate a permanent monument to the tragedy.

Creating a Permanent Memorial

On June 3, 2023, many Flight 293 families gathered near Seattle for a public ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the crash. The gathering formally memorialized the six-member civilian crew from Northwest Airlines, and the 95 active duty military, dependents and federal employees who were aboard the plane.

Among the more than 100 people who came from around the United States to pay their respects and to share their stories was Cherie Pipkin-Gardner, Bruce Barrowman’s high-school girlfriend.

The monument to Flight 293 was paid for with private funds raised by Greg Barrowman, and dedicated at Tahoma National Cemetery on June 3, 2023 – the 60th anniversary of the tragic loss. (Photo by Feliks Banel)

“I am so proud to be here, and I’m so grateful,” Pipkin-Gardner, who traveled from Arizona, said. “I think the things that Greg and the rest of his family have done are phenomenal. It’s helped so many people.”

Once the privately funded monument had been formally dedicated at Tahoma National Cemetery south of Seattle, the Flight 293 families gathered for a picnic at Greg Barrowman’s nearby home.

As Close as Our Language Can Come

“I don’t know if you really have closure,” Pipkin-Gardner said, as she shared stories about Bruce and about her lifelong bond with the Barrowman family. “I don’t know if closure is the right word,” she continued, “but I think it’s as close as our language can come.”


On the final episode of Unsolved Histories: What Happened to Flight 293?, the families and friends left behind gather on the 60th anniversary of the tragic event. For the very first time, as a group united by shared loss, the sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, grandsons and granddaughters commemorate their loved ones and pledge to keep seeking answers about Flight 293, and to be formally acknowledged by the Department of Defense.

List of Passengers and Crew of Flight 293

Special Thanks

Tonja Anderson-Dell, Honored Bound

Greg Barrowman

Don Bennett

Carolyn Olsen Bishop

Al Dams, King County Assessor’s Office

Jim Dever, Evening Magazine

Janet Ahlalook Dozette

Clay Eals, Seattle Times

Karen Forscher

Susan Francis

Cherie Pipkin Gardner

Rosie Geer

Mitch Grayson

Robin Henderson

Gary Horcher, KIRO7 News

Ted Huetter, Museum of Flight

Irene Johnson

Darlene Jevne

Julie Kallem

Tim and Elaine Kangas

Dave Kiffer

Bruce Kitt, NW Airlines History Center

Mike Lombardi, The Boeing Company

Kathy McGuire

Dr. Timothy McMahon, Armed Forces Medical Examiner System

Sally Minick

Bernie Moskowitz

Tim Murphy

Esther Naholowaa

Karen Nix

Fred and Ingrid Olsen

Myron Partington

Luke Preston

Joe Pouliot

Richard Pouliot

Steve Pouliot

Keith Pugh

Dan Pyryt

John Reed

Judi Larson Rice

Jean Sherrard, Seattle Times

Staff Sergeant Naomi Shipley, USAF

Connie Smith

Dr. Kevin Smith, AFMAO

Peter Stekel

Barry Strauch

Staff Sergeant Benjamin Sutton, USAF

Staff Sergeant Zoe Thacker, USAF

Valerie van Heest

John Washburn

Kim Wenger

Suzie Wiley, NewDayNW

Scott Williams

Bill Wixey, FOX 13

Emil Zupo

Leave No One Behind

By Feliks Banel, KSL Podcasts

The U.S. military promises that no wounded or killed service member will be left behind in the theater of war, and every reasonable effort will be made to bring home the remains of those who don’t survive. It’s a comforting promise made to family members of those who serve, and it’s a foundational pledge which dates back to the earliest days of the United States.

“It was coined during the Revolutionary War with the Ranger Battalion that was there at the time,” said Dr. Timothy McMahon of the Defense Department’s Armed Forces Medical Examiner System. “And it’s kind of transitioned into all of our military . . . that we leave no member behind.”

“And I think it goes more so because we’re a fully volunteer armed services,” Dr. McMahon continued. “We have young men and women who are taking the oath to stand watch and protect the citizens of the United States.”

“Knowing that your government is going to have your back at all times,” Dr. McMahon said, “is a very big key and essential part of our military service.”

The Defense Department spends millions of dollars every year searching battlefields and crash sites in former combat areas looking for remains of service members missing in action. When remains of loved ones are discovered and identified decades later, fulfillment of this promise is priceless to family members left behind.

“I knew his family would be happy to finally have him home”

When he was researching a wartime crash that had been lost for decades in the mountains of California, author and historian Peter Stekel actually came across remains of an aviator who had been missing for decades.

“It made me cry, I still get really, really torn up by the whole thing,” Stekel said. “It was humbling. It was amazing. It was wonderful, because I knew his family would be happy to finally have him home.”

However, for some reason, this promise to leave no one behind doesn’t apply to the male and female service members aboard Flight 293. It doesn’t apply to dozens of other flights carrying hundreds of American men and women who went missing while in service to their country.

Newspaper clipping about the search for the missing C-124 Globemaster in 1952. (Courtesy Tonja Anderson-Dell)

One of those other flights disappeared in Alaska in 1952, and one of the 52 men on board who went missing was the grandfather of Tonja Anderson-Dell.

Missing, but not Missing in Action

“I was six or seven years old the first time I heard about it,” said Tonja Anderson-Dell. “Because I seen a picture of my grandfather, but hadn’t seen him around my grandmother’s house. And then when I got a little bit older, I became nosy and wanted to know what really happened to him and why no one’s ever found him.”

While she was still a teenager, Tonja set out to find answers about why her grandfather’s plane had disappeared, and why the U.S. military had given up trying to find it.

My first letter I wrote to pretty much everybody – senators, the Navy, the Air Force, anyone I could think of that could help me,” Tonja said. “ The Air Force was like, ‘No, we’re not doing it, but how about you reach out to the Army?’ The Army said ‘Reach out to the Navy,’ the Navy said ‘Reach out to the Marines.’”

Search and recovery operations at Colony Glacier, where Isaac Anderson’s Air Force C-124 Globemaster crashed in 1952. (Courtesy Tonja Anderson-Dell)

“So it’s pretty much everybody’s saying no, but just sending me in that circle,” Tonja said.

Fighting for recognition for “Operational Loss”

But Tonja Anderson-Dell didn’t give up. She became a crusader for the families of service members who disappeared in what she calls “operational losses” – crashes of aircraft traveling between bases or on training flights or otherwise lost in non-combat situations. These are aircraft that the military has given up on ever trying to find.

“I just felt that when they said they never, never leave our fallen behind, that he was part of that group,” Tonja said of her grandfather. “And to find out that they were not part of that group, I couldn’t wrap my head around, I couldn’t grasp.”

“Because when he raised his hand, he swore the same words that a gentleman who was missing in action had sworn,” Tonja said.

On Episode Seven of Unsolved Histories: What Happened to Flight 293?, we untangle the bureaucracy behind what many families feel is an empty promise to “Leave No One Behind.”

The Crew

By By Feliks Banel, KSL Podcasts

The DC-7C that crashed into the Gulf of Alaska in June 1963 was the workplace for a crew of six professionals from Northwest Airlines, and we met pilot Albert Olsen – with help from his son and daughter –earlier in the series. The early 1960s was a different time, when female flight attendants were called “stewardesses” and weren’t allowed to be married, and the cockpit was the domain of only male aviators.

One of the two stewardesses aboard Flight 293 was a woman in her late 20s named Patricia Moran.

“I’d go up front, and she’d be sitting there, everybody’s sleeping,” said Darlene Jevne, who was also a Northwest Airlines flight attendant 60 years and ago and who considered “Patti” Moran a friend.

“And she’d be scribbling and writing down wonderful things,” Darlene said, because Patti was a poet who published a collection of poems in 1962. “You know, when you look outside of the aircraft when you’re flying,” Darlene continued, “and all the stars in beautiful scenery and the clouds?”

The front cover of “COME FLY WITH ME,” a book of poetry about being a flight attendant, self-published by Patti Moran in 1962, the year before she died aboard Flight 293. (Courtesy Rosie Geer)

“She put that all to poetry,” Darlene said.

Along with being a poet, Darlene says her friend Patti was already married and pregnant by the time she died aboard Flight 203, and was keeping both a secret from the airline so she could continue working.

Irene Johnson was also a Northwest Airlines flight attendant 60 years ago. She was in the same training class as Patti Moran, but Irene left airline work behind in 1961. She got married earlier that year and then became pregnant, but she worked as long as she could physically still do the job before calling it quits.

Since the “no marriage” rules didn’t apply to Irene’s husband Don Schaap, he kept his job as a steward, what they called male flight attendants in those days, for Northwest Airlines. Don was assigned to work Flight 293.

“There was a knock at the door and it was a colleague of my husband’s and a personal friend, our cabin services supervisor, and he said ‘Irene, can we come in?,’” Irene Johnson said, describing the moment at home with her infant daughter when she first learned that something had gone wrong on Don Schaap’s flight to Anchorage.

“And they said that they’ve ‘lost radio contact with the plane, we want you to know about that,’” Irene continued.

At first, Irene wasn’t overly concerned. She believed in Northwest Airlines’ management, and swore by the company’s safety record. And Irene believed in the DC-7C.

“I was so convinced that everything was going to be okay,” Irene said, “because I had such faith in the airline running a good, tight ship.”

And though the search for survivors was called off, Irene clung to this faith for more than a year. It was the summer of 1964 when she ran into a Northwest Airlines executive during a trip to Minnesota to visit her husband’s family.

Patti Moran and her husband James Wonsettler had to keep their marriage and her pregnancy a secret from Northwest Airlines, or she risked losing her job. (Courtesy Rosie Geer)

“‘Irene, give up that hope. I was at the crash scene,’” Irene said the airline executive told her. “’There was nothing but small debris floating,’” the man continued, Irene said. “’That thing had to have come apart in the air,’” he said.

Those particular words contributed to a conspiracy theory that Irene and many other family members left behind by the tragedy of Flight 293 would continue to believe for decades: that Flight 293 had been shot down by an air-to-air missile.

On Episode Six of Unsolved Histories: What Happened to Flight 293?, we meet the crew and learn how those they left behind have tried to cope with their loss and to move on with their lives. We also examine the origins of the more sinister theories for why the DC-7C went down, and try to get closer to the truth about what could have possibly gone wrong.

The Ditching

By Feliks Banel, KSL Podcasts

When Flight 293 crashed into the Gulf of Alaska in June 1963, it wasn’t the first time a Northwest Airlines DC-7C serving as a military charter between McChord and Elmendorf Air Force bases had gone down in the water. In October 1962, the same thing happened to another Flight 293, but with a completely different ending.

“I don’t remember the exact words, but they told us we had a runaway propeller and we kind of knew what that was,” retired Air Force fighter pilot Richard Pouliot said. Pouliot was a passenger on the Flight 293 of October 1962, on his way to a new assignment in Alaska. He passed away at age 90 in May 2024.

Runaway Prop

“It was on the left inboard engine,” Pouliot said, describing how the DC-7C he was aboard began experiencing a major mechanical failure known as a “runaway prop” or “overspeeding propeller.”

“The propeller really winds up and it gets quite hot and it can either tear off, and hopefully tear off free, and get out of there without doing anything,” Pouliot continued. “Or, it could chop into the good engine on the left […] or it could chop into the fuselage, which means your controls to the rear are all taken care of.”

Richard Pouliot was an Air Force fighter pilot in his late 20s when he survived the ditching of Flight 293 near Biorka Island, Alaska on October 22, 1962. (Courtesy Richard Pouliot)

In this case, the phrase “all taken care of” – in the words of a seasoned civilian flyer and longtime military aviator – means the controls would be completely wiped out, and the plane would spin out of control and crash. The Flight 293 Richard Pouliot was aboard had to get down and land as quickly as possible before that happened.

With no controls “you kind of fly like a rock,” Pouliot said. With this imminent threat from the runaway propeller – spinning out of control and getting dangerously hot – the pilot of the Flight 293 of October 1962 took fast action.

The plane “immediately started to descend, to get right down close to the water. I’d say maybe 500 feet, something like that,” Pouliot continued.

Aiming for a Safe Place to Land

At this point, the plane was north of Annette Island, where the other Flight 293 would later come down, and reaching the nearest airport would require flying over mountains. The decision was made by the pilots to fly only over water in order to reach Sitka, which had seaplane facilities but no runway, or Gustavus, which did have a runway.

The pilots had radioed for help as soon as the problem emerged, and the steward and two stewardesses, that’s what flight attendants were called in those days, prepped the passengers for a water landing. They gave everyone inflatable “Mae West” life vests, and told them how to brace for impact. They moved passengers out of the danger zone where the propeller might tear through the cabin. This meant that Richard Pouliot, sitting near the back of the plane, had another passenger sitting on the floor between his feet.

For the next 45 minutes or so, the Northwest Airlines DC-7C headed north over the water, aiming for Sitka or Gustavus.

They didn’t make it to either.

“The prop never did tear off, but the engine just completely burst into flames,” Pouliot said. “And the movement through the air brings those flames back over the wing, and the wing is where the fuel tanks are.”

“As soon as we caught fire,” Pouliot continued, “we were down there close enough to the water that [the pilot] just pulled the throttles back, I think made about a 45-degree turn to the left, and set it down.”

One Heck of a Big Jolt

The landing consisted of two thumps: initial contact with the choppy water, and then one more less intense impact.

“We did have one heck of a big jolt,” Pouliot said. “And then the airplane actually bounced and we had a second big jolt and then came to a stop.”

A vintage American aeronautical navigation chart is annotated to show Biorka Island, where the Flight 293 of October 22, 1962 ditched and all aboard survived. (Courtesy NOAA Archives)

Remarkably, within about five minutes, even as water began filling the cabin, the passengers and crew all evacuated and climbed into five inflatable life rafts. Not long after that, they had transferred first to a small radio navigation maintenance boat operated by the FAA, and then to a Coast Guard cutter.

While similar in so many ways to the Flight 293 that disappeared in June 1963, everyone aboard this Flight 293 survived.

Richard Pouliot was a decorated Air Force fighter pilot who survived the ditching of Flight 293 on October 22, 1962. He passed away in May 2024 at age 90. (Courtesy Richard Pouliot)

On Episode Five of Unsolved Histories: What Happened to Flight 293?, we examine the amazing story of survival of the passengers and crew of the other Flight 293, and glean what we can from that near-disaster to understand what happened when the other flight went down.