The Wild West Comes to the Third Street Depot
A young man arrives in town dressed for a frontier lifestyle, only to be told by local authorities that such theatrics are no longer welcome.
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.
There landed at the Third street depot from a Chicago train, the other morning, a young man wearing a wide sombrero and a buffalo-skin overcoat. In his belt he had two revolvers and a knife, and as he was stalking about the waiting room, Special Officer Button walked up to him and asked: 'Going to tarry here any length of time?' 'Well, I guess I’ll do the town.' 'Then off with those gimcracks. They are not considered at all dangerous, but they might frighten some.' 'What! Give up my weapons?' 'Exactly. I’ll lay them away for you until you are ready to go. You might be mistaken for a terror of the plains if you went prancing around town rigged out like that.' 'But I’ve shot Indians!' protested the man. 'Hush! Hand them over.' 'And I’ve been all through Oklahoma and No Man’s Land.' 'What of it? Peel off those gimcracks. The terror business is played out. Why, sir, somebody would hit you on the nose before you had gone a block.' 'They would? Don’t I look like a fighter?' 'Baw! They’d take you for some Clean-some Santa Claus who got left somewhere. Peel off.' 'Well, I guess I’ll be off, but you must be a mighty curious lot of people here. I guess you don’t appreciate a desperate man?' 'No, we don’t,' replied the officer as he repaired the weapons. 'Now, you can go out and see the town. If anybody asks you who you are, tell them you are a sheep drover and here to see some calves.' The man went outside, walked around a block in a dodgy sort of way, and returned to sit down and say: 'I guess I don’t want to see your town. Don’t any of your people seem to appreciate the difference between an Indian fighter and a farmer? Wonder if I can buy a novel anywhere around here?'
“The terror business is played out. Why, sir, somebody would hit you on the nose before you had gone a block.”
This vignette perfectly captures the tension between the closing frontier myth and the reality of a town trying to formalize itself. Even in the 1890s, Yakima was shedding its 'Wild West' reputation for a more settled, civic identity, mirroring how modern, gentrifying cities often police their own public image to attract new residents.
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