Railroad Workers Torch a Notorious 'Dive'
Vigilante laborers in the Cascades take matters into their own hands, using dynamite to destroy a saloon they claim was robbing their comrades.
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.
Workingmen from along the line of the Everett-Monte Cristo railroad bring the report of a riot and the total destruction of the Blazing Tree saloon and dance house, located about thirty miles below Monte Cristo on the Getchell-Monte Cristo wagon road. The Blazing Tree was a companion saloon and brothel to the notorious Blazing Stump at Getchell, and was put in to catch the trade of the railroaders farther up the road. According to reports, railroad men had become incensed at the outrages committed in the Blazing Tree, where workers were allegedly drugged and robbed. Last Tuesday night, about 100 men, mainly from Bowman Paine's camp, headed by their foreman, marched down the road armed with revolvers and dynamite. After ordering the occupants out, the crowd smashed the saloon's liquor stock. When the bar was cleaned out, a stick of dynamite was set off in the piano, shivering it into small bits. More dynamite completed the wreckage of the establishment, which subsequently caught fire. The crowd then marched back in an orderly manner to their camps. Great satisfaction is expressed along the line of the railroad at the job, as it will have a tendency to clear the valley of the thugs, thieves, and disreputable women who have been preying on the railroaders.
“When the bar was cleaned out, a stick of dynamite was set off in the piano, shivering it into small bits.”
This 1898 instance of frontier vigilantism reflects the intense lawlessness of boom-era labor camps, where workers often felt unprotected by the state. While modern labor disputes have moved to the boardroom, the tension between transient workers and predatory local businesses remains a recurring theme in the Pacific Northwest's history of extractive industries.
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