The Carbonado Roadhouse Shooting
A local man is recovering from a mysterious gunshot wound after a violent, alcohol-fueled scuffle in a remote roadhouse between Carbonado and Wilkeson.
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.
Andrew Syyninaa, the Russian Finn, held at the county jail on the charge of shooting John Beckman at the 'tie camp' between Carbonado and Wilkeson, has been released, as it was proven to the satisfaction of the county attorney that the man was not within a thousand yards of the place when the shooting occurred, and witnesses declared that he never had a pistol. Beckman, it was shown, was shot by someone from within the house, and not by anyone on the outside. There is bad blood between the Finns at Carbonado and Wilkeson and the other nationalities found in those towns. It was reported to The Times that the controversy started over buying drinks for a woman inhabitant of the road house. Luke Nightingale, proprietor of the place, whose reputation is not of the best, and who carries two pistols all the time, joined in the scrimmage, in which Beckman was forced out of the house and down into a cellar. Immediately after the man had fallen into the cellar, Nightingale called for a lantern, and then a shot rang out. Beckman is still at the Fannie Paddock Hospital; the bullet lodged in the hip, and though his wound is painful, it is not serious.
“There is bad blood between the Finns at Carbonado and Wilkeson and the other nationalities found in those towns, and whenever trouble arises in which a Finn is involved one can be sure that his countrymen will shield him if possible.”
Roadhouses and 'tie camps' were the rough, often lawless centers of social life in the industrial landscape of the early 1900s. The racial and ethnic tensions described here in the coal-mining towns of Carbonado and Wilkeson are reflective of the volatile labor and social environment of Pierce County at the turn of the century.
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