Reading Amy Nile’s lead of the 1895 Gold Leaf Saloon shooting to her article about First Street bars (“Liquor Board will crack down on First Street bars in Snohomish”) brings to mind just how few “Wild West-style” shootings were reported in The Eye, Snohomish’s second weekly newspaper.
Researching for my book about the 19th-century architect, J.S. White, (“Capturing History’s Past”), I have skimmed the local news pages in The Eye from 1884 until 1897 when the paper folded, and the stories about bars and too much whiskey that stick out to me, are the suicides.
In the election of 1886, First Street bars hosted candidates “buying” votes with free whiskey. The Oct. 30, 1886, issue of The Eye reported the story of Levi Bowker, a stranger in town from his summer job on a hops ranch east of town. He retired to his room in the Exchange Hotel between 9 and 10 Tuesday evening “considerably under the influence of free campaign whiskey.”
The hotel clerk found him the next morning, “lying in a natural and easy position on the bed with his clothes on.” A nearly empty morphine bottle and three brief and “poorly written notes” found on the bedside table with instructions what to do with his things: “Give my shotgun to my boy Henry if he ever comes to the Sound.” Written on the back of a poll tax receipt: “Keep my (other) things for your kindness to me. I will soon know the great mystery.” The Eye ended its account that he was about 38 years old, and a native of Springfield, Maine.
It’s a silent story about mixing alcohol with deep feelings of frontier isolation, that I find impossible to connect with our contemporary mix of booze and boredom.
Warner Blake
Snohomish
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