The Wilds of the 'Lava Beds'
When an aggressive vagrant terrorized a Seattle officer with a chair, he fled into the darkness of the city's infamous 'Lava Beds' district—a place where the law struggled to follow.
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.
A few days ago, a logger was swindled in one of the 'lava beds' and was set upon by a group of scoundrels who hang about them, and was treated in a most brutal and shocking manner. His shoulder was dislocated and he was variously injured in other ways. He swore out a warrant on Wednesday; however, the fellow's arrest was attempted that night. Officer Nelson found him in one of the dens there and attempted to arrest him, when he seized a chair and, aiming it at Nelson's head, swore that he would brain him on the spot if he attempted it. The officer was in the act of drawing his pistol when the vagrant flung the chair at him and plunged through the door into the street, passing Officer Thorndike in his flight, who instantly drew a revolver on him and ordered him to stop. He retorted with a threat at the officer and ran on, when Thorndike, as an officer ought to do under the circumstances, fired at him, but missed him. The fellow ran on like a quarter horse and was soon lost in the dark. He is only one of these despicable vags who swarm about the 'lava beds' and subsist preying about the squaw brothers—a den of infamy there like vultures on a pile of carrion. They are of the very worst class of thieves and are, when they get a chance, never known to work, and subsist by decoying the unwary into the hell-holes known as the lava beds, which are adjacent to our city, and robbing them of their money. Have we no laws by which the fellows who run these filthy quarters can be got rid of? The safety and good repute of the city demand it.
“They are of the very worst class of thieves and are, when they get a chance, never known to work, and subsist by decoying the unwary into the hell-holes known as the lava beds.”
This 1877 report captures a Seattle on the frontier, where 'Lava Beds' served as a coded, derogatory term for the informal red-light districts or vice-ridden shanty towns on the city's outskirts. It echoes modern frustrations with public safety and the 'lawless' stigma often projected onto informal settlements or encampments, revealing a centuries-old tension between urban development and marginalized populations.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.