The Wild West of Lake Washington
A local man reports being ambushed and knocked from his horse by two men on a remote trail near Lake Washington.
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 man named Fred Tangier seems to have been tracing some timber land near Lake Washington. He took the path today and started up a white rise to steal some survey notes. When about one mile beyond the race track, two young fellows rode up to him, one on either side, and two of them grabbed him and knocked him off his horse and stole it, leaving him stranded. He walked the trail and secured the horse, but they both pitched in and knocked him down and again stole the horse and fled with it. He went to Mr. Campbell's place, and he put him on the track to Sheriff Moore, telling him about the case for the arrest of the two men, and a deputy came this morning to examine into the matter. Mr. Campbell, in his letter to the Sheriff, stated that he recognized one of the men as an employee of R. H. J. and the other one he had not known. This was either a drunken freak on the part of the two men, or a deliberate piece of highway robbery. At any rate, they should be arrested and punished to the full extent as stated by Mr. Campbell.
“This was either a drunken freak on the part of the two men, or a deliberate piece of highway robbery.”
While Lake Washington is today a bustling, urbanized corridor, in the late 19th century it was a frontier where timber claims were fiercely contested. The casual violence reported here—highway robbery on a trail—is a sharp reminder that Seattle's 'pioneer' era was defined by land-grab disputes and unchecked vigilantism that often outpaced formal law enforcement.
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