The Last Stand at Point Edmonds
A stubborn brickyard owner defends his property against the Great Northern Railway with nothing but a shotgun and legal grit.
Captain N. L. Rogers, port warden, arrived back from Snohomish yesterday, having been up there to give testimony in the case of the Great Northern vs. Captain W. J. Bryant. The railroad company is trying to force Bryant to permit the railroad to run through his brickyard, situated between Wells point and Point Edmonds, and Captain Rogers was subpoenaed as a witness to testify as to the value of the harbor at that point. Bryant has kept the railroad men off his place at the point of a shotgun.
“Bryant has kept the railroad men off his place at the point of a shotgun.”
This 1891 standoff between a small landowner and a powerful rail monopoly echoes the ongoing tension in Seattle between individual property rights and major infrastructure projects. Today, the stretch near Edmonds continues to be a bottleneck where regional transit interests frequently collide with the local waterfront landscape.
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