The Toll Road Gunman of Snoqualmie Pass
A mysterious defender emerges for the man who tried to charge immigrants with a shotgun.
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.
The article in yesterday's POST-INTELLIGENCER telling how a man named Beard recently attempted to collect, with a shotgun, toll from two poor immigrants who were passing over the portion of the old Snoqualmie toll road lying in Kittitas county, and of his dismal failure to do so, has called out a champion for him in the person of 'A Settler of the Pass,' who writes to the POST-INTELLIGENCER a long letter in a feminine hand, dated Seattle, October 8. She says that Beard received from F. A. Hill, receiver of the toll road company, on August 17, a copy of the Kittitas franchise of the company, together with instructions to collect toll in Kittitas county, which he has since done. She claims Beard has kept the road open for three years at his own expense and should be allowed to recoup his money in tolls. The county commissioners of King county, however, maintain the entire franchise is illegal and are encouraging Kittitas authorities to fight it and throw the road open.
“Do the commissioners of King county run the commissioners of Kittitas? Are they not capable of looking after the roads in their own county?”
This 1893 skirmish over public access to mountain transit routes mirrors contemporary debates about the privatization of infrastructure. While the shotgun-wielding collector is a relic, the conflict between private franchise rights and the public's right to move freely remains a core tension in Washington's growth.
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