Washburn.—While wandering about on the ice covering the Missouri river, searching for his team, which he had lost in a fog, Nels Nelson, a prosperious former {sp} of Conkling, a few miles west of Washburn, fell through an air-hole Friday evening and was swept away by the swift current before two neighbors who were with him could rescue him. There is little hope that the body ever will be recovered. A son of Thomas Thompson, who, with Henry Dahl, was with Nelson at the time of the tragedy, fell into the same hole, but one foot clung to the safe ice long enough to permit his father to seize it and drag the boy to safety.

Langdon Courier Democrat, 1/2/1919