The Ghost of a Mob in Colfax
Decades after a violent public lynching left a permanent stain on the community, the citizens of Colfax still wake to find ominous reminders scrawled on the sidewalk.
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.
On Tuesday the salt sidewalks at every corner in the city of Colfax contained cryptic figures in chalk. The citizens of Colfax treated this bulletin to the lynchings, and one way of reading it was: 'First day, sixth month—double lynching.' The figures 130 are supposed to indicate the rendezvous. The letters are thought to mean 'Come prepared.' Whitman County has never witnessed a legal execution of a murderer. Many have been tried here at much expense to the county, and without satisfaction to the mass of the people. In 1887 Colfax witnessed a lynching, when the county jail was attacked by a mob which forced Sheriff Dave Marsh to give up the keys and took out Knott, who murdered a man named Higgins near Pullman and hanged him over the jail yard. The county jail was then on the hillside about 150 yards west of Island street bridge, and a little to the south.
“Whitman county has never witnessed a legal execution of a murderer... In 1887 Colfax witnessed a lynching, when the county jail was attacked by a mob.”
This piece highlights the chilling persistence of extrajudicial violence in Washington's early history, where the community's own trauma was marked by anonymous, threatening chalk messages. It serves as a grim reminder that such acts of violence often left deep scars on the collective civic memory long after the bodies were cut down.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.