Cusick Wants a Calaboose as Railroad Roughs Run Wild
A justice of the peace petitions county commissioners for a jail after railroad construction crews bring drinking, brawling, and black eyes to town.
Justice of the Peace J. M. Merrick, by request, has circulated a petition asking the county commissioners to build a calaboose in Cusick. A calaboose is made necessary by the influx of hoboes and bad men following in the wake of the railroad construction camps. They blow into Cusick, fill up on barleyized Pend Oreille water, and keep the Indians across the river awake nights by their howling and screeching. All last week there were a number of highly decorated and discolored eyes floating around town.
“A calaboose is made necessary by the influx of hoboes and bad men following in the wake of the railroad construction camps.”
Cusick's 1909 request for a jail is a classic boomtown problem: railroad work brings money and transient workers, then a town has to build institutions to handle the rough edges. The episode shows how public-safety spending followed the construction camps into the Pend Oreille valley.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.