Nine Residents, Then None: Wolf’s Landing Goes Bust
A Newport correspondent reports that Wolf’s Landing has lost every resident, its steamboats no longer whistle, and even the real-estate men have fled to Newport. A lone police chief will watch the deserted village this winter.
WOLF'S LANDING — This town is on the bum. Every single person has deserted the camp. The steamboats do not even whistle here as they go by. All of the real estate men have pulled to Newport and left this place in the lurch. Along in the spring, when the railroad surveyed their line through the place, the site looked fine. At one time there were at least nine residents at the landing. Local option carried and most of the residents departed for more favorable localities. We lasted longer than the rest, but have now decided to return to the classic shades of dear old Idaho and hob-nob with the elite of Old Town. Mr. Deinhart has been appointed chief of police at Wolf's Landing and will watch things in that deserted village during the winter.
“This town is on the bum. Every single person has deserted the camp.”
Local option — the right of a town to ban liquor sales — could make or break tiny settlements in the early twentieth century, just as a lost rail survey or a shift in real-estate attention could. Wolf’s Landing is a reminder that boosterism’s casualties were often only a few miles from the towns that absorbed them.
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