What do we owe history?

On Friday, 23 July 1926, shortly after noon, Forrest Ketring [given name Herman Forrest Ketring] of Denver fell to his death while attempting to climb Longs Peak via the east face.

As a practical matter, the Estes Park Trail had already gone to press, and wasn't in the habit of issuing extras.  So Estes Park readers, if they subscribed to nothing else, and didn't have access to a radio, and forbade their friends from using the telephone to update them on any news, and never left their homes, would have had to wait until the following Friday to learn of this tragedy.

What would they have learned?  Had they only had access to the Trail, they would have been given an incorrect spelling of his last name (Keatring [sic] instead of Ketring [noted and puzzled over unnecessarily in "Death, Despair, and Second Chances", no thanks to the Trail]), and a seemingly contradictory quote from Rocky Mountain National Park Superintendent Roger Wolcott Toll about the wisdom of summiting via the east face route ["barely possible" rather than "fairly passable" may have been his actual opinion and correctly quoted in the Trail, or, equally likely, the Trail stole these words from another account (itself incorrect) and clumsily misrepresented them, but the earlier accounts take precedence, whether or not they are accurate].  They would have been given a lecture rather than a news story.  They would not have learned Ketring's mother's name, or anything about his upbringing.  It frank terms, they would have been given an account equivalent to that found in a small town high school paper, indeed, a school paper lacking a journalism advisor or anyone with any writing background, which was, in essence, what the Estes Park Trail distributed on a weekly basis throughout the 1920s.

This is hardly the time to insert the Seinfeld line "Not that there's anything wrong with that."  There is plenty wrong with that, and we know because other newspapers at the time covered this story (along with many, many others) better, when by rights these stories should have been Estes Park stories, because we were the closest, proximity-wise, and best understood the lay of the land.

So what do you do?  You can hardly graft on all the details (via footnotes, for example) of the1926 fall necessary to make the Estes Park Trail's account rise to the level of barely competent and unembarrassing.  Instead, you have to append another account in its entirety, for example, that appearing in the Loveland Reporter-Herald (which was almost certainly pulled from a Denver wire story), and use that appended account as the basis for improvement.  I'm not in any way claiming that the Reporter-Herald crafted the perfect or ultimate account (although it's much better than the butchering of the same starting template appearing in the Aspen Daily Times, for example) - That appeared, with photographs, in the Denver papers, a city with the resources and reporters and interest to cover it, but I have full confidence Denver can digitize its own papers, and has the volunteer or paid staff required to improve on this digitization, if they so choose.

Estes Park does not, and certainly doesn't even have the interest currently, and may never feel any obligation to the family or the history of Longs Peak climbing accidents to fix an unfixable problem.  Scanning and digitization of the Trail can be perfect (which it won't be) and can perfectly transcribe Forrest Ketring's incorrectly spelled name in this case, but (until we develop true AI) it can't fix it, or spell out his mother's name in full, or his brother's, or his climbing companion's, or dig deep enough to learn that his father was a clergyman, and had passed away when he was still a small boy.

Below is the initial 1000-word front page Reporter-Herald account, which has problems of its own, but the problems of a half-filled mop bucket overturned on a kitchen floor, not of a sink being turned on and allowed to overflow and flood the basement (improvements added without comment or, where appropriate, in brackets, to make a good account even better, and more searchable and thus useful to future generations, because that's just how I roll):

Saturday, 24 July 1926 Loveland Reporter-Herald – Headline, subhead, and dateline:  Falls 1,000 Feet In Longs Peak Climb.  Young Denver athlete falls over cliff on east face of Longs Peak yesterday to snow bank at Chasm Lake.  Companion hears cry of terror and sees body flash past him to death below.  Denver, 24 July 1926 – Forrest Ketring [given name Herman Forrest Ketring], 19 years old, of 3529 West Forty-Fourth (44th) Avenue, was killed shortly after noon yesterday when he fell 1,000 feet from the east face of Longs Peak to the snow bank at Chasm Lake at the foot of the precipice.  Reuel E. James, 21 of 4524 Perry Street [interestingly, in the 1925 Denver city directory, Reuel E. James' residence is given as 3505 W. 44th Avenue, although the 1926 and 1927 directories gives the Perry Street address], Forrest Ketring’s companion, was a short distance behind the youth when he lost his hold on the sheer rock wall of the cliff.  Reuel E. James heard Forrest Ketring’s cry of terror and saw the body flash past him in the air.  Himself stricken with fear, he clung desperately to the rock wall, powerless to aid his companion.  Forrest Ketring’s body, according to information received here, struck the snow bank and Chasm Lake and slid 300 feet before it crashed into the rocks.  Subhead:  Called encouragement.  “Everything looks all right,” Forrest Ketring called to Reuel E. James just a few seconds before he slipped and fell, Reuel E. James told members of the party which went to obtain Forrest Ketring’s body.  “He seemed to be making his way safely and when he stopped for a short rest, he looked back and called encouragement to me,” Reuel E. James said.  After his companion had hurtled past him, Reuel James retraced his steps over the trail and found the crumpled body of his friend 1,300 feet below the rocky ledge where he had fallen.  Subhead:  Notifies trail makers.  Reuel E. James then scrambled up the trail and notified the crew of seven men who are making a trail to Chasm Lake.  Accompanied by Roger Wolcott Toll, superintendent of the Rocky Mountain National Park, the men hurried to the spot where Forrest Ketring had fallen, and recovered the body.  He was taken to Timberline Cabin and thence to the Hewes-Kirkwood Hotel in Estes Park [sic], where the coroner was summoned.  His nerves shattered by the experience, Reuel James at first was unable to tell rescuers what had occurred.  Later, he calmed, and described the climb which proved fatal to his companion.  The two had left the foot of Longs Peak Thursday afternoon, he said, and spent the night at Timberline Cabin.  Yesterday, they resumed their climb to the summit.  Subhead:  Hears companion’s cry.  Forrest Ketring had led the way, and seeming to have greater endurance in the high altitude than his companion, was a considerable distance ahead when they reached a point at Chimney Gulch known as Broadway Ledge.  Reuel E. James said he was clinging to the rock and had not glanced up for some little time when he heard a cry from Forrest Ketring and the sound of a body slipping from the rocks.  Holding to his precarious position, he glanced upward just as his chum lost his hold on the bare face of the precipice and shot outward and downward through the air.  The body flashed past him in the air and vanished into the chasm.  Subhead:  Battle way to body.  Reuel E. James found members of the trail crew and they hurried with him to the spot where Forrest Ketring’s body lay, but on account of the ruggedness of the trail, did not reach the body until 4:00 p.m. in the afternoon.  The seven men were forced to work in relays in carrying the body back from the foot of the cliff, and they did not reach the Hewes-Kirkwood Inn until 9:00 p.m. last night.  As soon as the body had been recovered, members of the trail crew hurried to Timberline Cabin, the nearest telephone point, and word was sent to Forrest Ketring’s mother, Mrs. Elva Pearl Ketring, here.  It was expected the body would be sent to Denver today.  The two boys left Denver Thursday morning, intending to spend two days in the mountains and return to Denver last night.  Reuel James, who is a pressman at the Smith-Brooks Printing Company, is an accomplished mountain climber, having scaled Longs Peak twice previously, and climbed many of the highest mountain peaks in the state.  Subhead:  Boys warm friends.  He had been complaining about his eyes, and had decided to spend some time in the outdoors in an effort to relieve them.  The boys were warm friends, and had determined to make the trip together.  Forrest Ketring was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on 8 May 1907.  He attended North High School for one year, but was forced to withdraw on account of sickness.  For the last two years, he has been attending the Fort Luis [sic, Fort Lewis] School at Herperis [sic, Hesperus], Colorado.  He would have been graduated next year, and then planned on entering the University of Colorado in the fall.  He was regarded as one of the best amateur tennis players in the city.  He is survived by his mother, Mrs. Elva Pearl Ketring [his father Herman Feaster Ketring, a clergyman, died in 1913], a sister Mrs. Guy Thomas Burgess [Glenna Florence Ketring] of Cheyenne, Wyoming, and a brother Vernon Vivian Ketring of Denver.  Subhead:  East side dangerous.  “The regular trail to the summit of Longs Peak is not dangerous under normal summer conditions,” Rocky Mountain National Park superintendent Roger Wolcott Toll declared last night.  This is shown by the fact that more than 1,000 persons make the trip in safety each year.  Many of the climbers are women.  “The scaling of the east face of the peak is an entirely different problem.  There is no regular trail, but the climb is up a fairly passable route over the most precipitous side of the peak.  It is dangerous at all times, as anyone traversing it must realize.  The National Park Service does not recommend this route over the east face.  It should not be attempted by anyone who is not an unusually competent climber, and accompanied by an experienced guide.  The best plan is to stay as far away from the precipice as possible, , and take the trips which are known to be safe.”