Legal Loophole Shuts Down Roslyn Saloons
A Supreme Court ruling invalidating town incorporations leaves local liquor dealers facing massive fines and total business closures.
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.
Thomas Lund, of Roslyn, is in the city awaiting the turn of events in Kittitas county. Mr. Lund was a liquor dealer of Roslyn, and when that town was incorporated, as was a couple of score of other towns under the act of the legislators of 1888, he took out a city license. Recently Judge Anders, of the supreme court, with the concurrence of Judges Hoyt and Stiles, decided that the act under which these towns were incorporated was invalid and that they had no corporate existence. Under this decision the commissioners of Kittitas county refuse to allow saloons at Roslyn to open without the payment of the thousand-dollar license, and further they threaten prosecution for selling liquor in the past without a county license. Every saloon in the Roslyn district is now closed.
“This looks like bearing down pretty heavy. The dealers took out licenses in accordance with the will and act of the legislature, and now on account of some flaw in that act they not only lose the money paid... but have the bugbear of prosecution thrust into their faces.”
This 1890 dispute over municipal legitimacy and business regulation reflects a recurring theme in Washington history: the precarious nature of small-town autonomy under state law. Much like modern battles over zoning and regulatory compliance, the Roslyn saloon keepers found that a bureaucratic 'flaw' could turn a legal business into a criminal enterprise overnight.
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