100 years ago in Spokane: Drunken NYE revels land three in a ditch

A wild New Year’s Eve celebration turned dangerous when three drunken men stole an auto and drove it into ditch on Sunset Boulevard at high speed.

Two of the men were slightly injured, and the third was seriously injured.

A farmer came upon the accident and offered to drive the two slightly injured men into the city, but they refused and said “they would walk.” The farmer called police and the two men left the scene. The third man was taken to the emergency hospital with a fractured skull.

He will be charged with grand larceny, although his injuries may prove fatal.

From the accident beat: Henry M. Moss, construction superintendent of the Spokane Athabsaca Oil Co., survived a frozen ordeal in the frigid wastes of northern Canada.

He was injured in a fall, hundreds of miles north of Edmonton. His companions struggled over miles of barren land, hauling him on sleds.

They finally arrived at a rudimentary railroad line, where they were able to board a work train. Yet the ordeal was not over. The train could only go four and a half miles per hour.

At one point they ran out of fuel, but they found a “a pile of coal under the snow beside the track, where the engine had tipped over several months before.” At another point, they dug up railroad ties to use as fuel.

Moss had been scouting well sites along the Athabasca River for his Spokane company.