100 years ago in Spokane: Missile mystery stays mysterious

The case of the mysterious “missile,” which allegedly fell into Mrs. O DeCamp’s yard, remained mysterious. Two competing stories had emerged.

One story came from Mrs. DeCamp’s son-in-law, Harry Draper, who said he went out to the house and dug up the missile, which he described as weighing nine-and-a-half pounds and was embedded nearly a foot in the earth.

However, reporters went out to the house and found no evidence of any “falling meteor” or anything like it, the Spokane Daily Chronicle reported. Mrs. DeCamp was apparently not talking, but one of her neighbors was.

The neighbor said Mrs. DeCamp told him that it was an iron cannon ball of the Civil War type, and it had not fallen from the sky. Some neighborhood boys had thrown it on the front porch or the front walk and woken her up.

Draper stuck by his story that he dug it out of the ground. He displayed the “missile” for reporters.

From the clothing beat: The cost of clothing had skyrocketed since the war, and one Spokane woman vowed to ease the burden on the city’s “army of unmarried men.”

She vowed to mend the old clothes of bachelors and other “men without women relatives,” free of charge.

“If I can make the clothes of men and boys last longer for them and thus help them to refuse to buy new clothing while prices are so high, I will feel that I have done something to help in the movement to bring the prices down,” said Mrs. H.T. Jackson.