The Switchback Brawl
A violent confrontation breaks out between railroad workers and locals over a disputed switchback rail line.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Deputy Sheriff and Detective Miles arrived in Seattle on Tuesday night with two men, Moran and Jones, who were arrested as they were wanted by Police Judge Jones on Saturday for assault and battery. A number of witnesses to the affair arrived yesterday, and from them the information was gained that trouble, which has been one of the sources of all this trouble over the switchback, had to be settled by force. The men employed by the Northern Pacific Railway were the only ones available for the work, and they were ordered to go at it. Immediately they went out and primed themselves with whisky and, returning, proceeded to assault Lawson. Five to one were too many, and Lawson was pretty badly injured. They left him and wrested the station branch and telegraph office and went then to the road house, where they found a man named H. Mullein, who had nothing to do with it, knowing nothing of the trouble between them and Lawson. This mattered nothing. They were thirsting for gore and bashed Mullein's face in.
“They were thirsting for gore and bashed Mullein's face in.”
This 1887 report of corporate-hired goons using violence to enforce rail development echoes a long history of Seattle's industrial growth being carved out through physical coercion. It highlights the early, lawless phase of infrastructure expansion that eventually shaped the city's modern transit corridors.
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