The Battle of the West Street Crossing
A lone police officer stands his ground against a railroad crew in a decades-long property dispute.
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 historic 'ram's horn' controversy flared up again yesterday when Officer George Sheehan, alone and unaided, withstood the invading hosts of the railroad company at the West Street crossing and took them captive to police headquarters. This chapter of the dispute involves the Columbia and Puget Sound Railway Company, which was attempting to lay tracks for a right-of-way that has been a legal quagmire for years. The city, led by Mayor Ronald and City Engineer Thomson, insisted the crew was operating outside their legal boundaries. When Superintendent Newman Kline and his crew refused to halt construction, Officer Sheehan arrested the lot of them, marching the officials and four workmen to the station in the police 'hurry-up' wagon. They were paroled until Monday on the condition that no further work be done on the disputed strip of land near R. H. Westerman's blacksmith shop.
“If you tell me to soak my head, I'll take you in.”
The 'ram's horn' track controversy is a relic of Seattle's early corporate territorialism, where railroads and city officials fought over inches of land. Today's urban development in Seattle still mirrors these clashes, though they now manifest as battles over zoning, bike lanes, and public rights-of-way.
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