The Ghost Warrant of Ellensburgh
A legal warrant for a pre-fire assault is discovered in the brush, long after the records and the town itself were consumed by the blaze.
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.
By a great deal of expense and earnest endeavor, The Herald is to-day enabled to lay before its readers a couple of papers which should be in the Smithsonian Institute of Washington, as they are connected indirectly with the conflagration and pyrotechnical display of July 4th, 1889, which swept into desuetude blocks of residences and business houses of the city of Ellensburgh. The documents are presented below: WARRANT: Territory of Washington, County of Kittitas. To the sheriff or any constable of said county: Whereas, Peter Kutchen has this day complained in writing, under oath to the undersigned justice of the peace in and for said county, that John S. did, on the 3d day of July, A. D., 1889, in said county, unlawfully beat, bruise and strike the said Peter Kutchen and other wrongs to the said Peter Kutchen then and there did. Therefore, in the name of the United States, you are commanded forthwith to apprehend the said John S. and bring him before me to be dealt with according to law. Given under my hand this 3d day of July, A. D., 1889. F. H. Rudkin, Justice of the Peace. RETURN: I hereby certify that this warrant came into my hands the 3d day of July, A. D., 1889... but whereas, on the night of July 4th, 1889, at the hour of about 11:30 p. m., by the act of God or some one with coal oil and a match, the said city of Ellensburgh... was visited by a dire calamity and reduced to wreck and ruin by the fiery elements; and whereas, on the 5th day of July, the office of the said J. P., or what was left of it, was tied up in a sheet and deposited, with divers other articles, in the brush near the junction of Water and Third streets... the unsettled state of society caused this warrant to be forgotten and misplaced. Now, therefore, the same is hereby returned as "defunct," by me, a peace officer long since "defunct," to be cherished and preserved as a "defunct" memento of the "defunct" past that tried men’s souls.
“The office of the said J. P., or what was left of it, was tied up in a sheet and deposited, with divers other articles, in the brush near the junction of Water and Third streets.”
The Great Ellensburg Fire of 1889 destroyed much of the downtown, a catastrophe that reshaped the city’s urban form. Finding a mundane, unfinished legal warrant for a petty assault among the ashes of a citywide disaster offers a rare, human-scale look at the chaotic transition from the territorial period to statehood.
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