by Bob Gunter
Today Sandpoint, Idaho is known for its beautiful lake and majestic mountains. It is known as a good place to find serenity and a sense of peace.
But the Sandpoint of old had a different reputation. As early as 1884 Sandpoint had garnered quite a reputation. W.A. Baillie-Grohman, an early traveler, tells of his experience in the area. He stated, "...obliged me during 1884 to be frequently for days at a time in Sandpoint, the nearest rail and post station, which then afforded the only approach to Kootenay. In this wretched hole, one of the "tough" towns in the tough territory of Idaho, where shooting scrapes and "hanging bees" were common events."
Baillie-Grohman wrote this description of payday on the railroad. "It was that the monthly pay-car had passed through Sandpoint that afternoon, and hence all the male population in the place with the exception of Weeks were "filling up" as fast as the six whiskey dens in the place could bring about that happy end." He said, "...I knew Sandpoint--known also as Hangtown--could hold its own for depravity."
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Major Fred B. Reed confirmed the early image of Sandpoint in an interview with the Pend d'Oreille Review in 1964. He stated, "I was through here with the Northern Pacific construction gang in 1880 and Sandpoint was the toughest place in the United States. Over at the end of your big bridge was 'Hangtown' and it was over there that we had our necktie parties." He went on to tell about the time that six men were hanged at one time.
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A Sandpoint paper reported in 1906 the discovery of four skeletons found by a worker while digging a ditch for a water main. At first the remains were thought to be the bodies of Indians because it was known that an Indian burial ground had been in the area. Each skeleton had been placed in a wooden coffin and one of them was a red headed woman.
An old timer remembered the bodies were there as a result of blood shed during the time the Northern Pacific railroad was being built.
One body was of a man who went into a local saloon and was taken suddenly sick and died. His sickness and death was a mystery. The red headed woman and her lover had quarreled over the dead man and the woman shot her boy friend. That was grave number two. She killed herself by an overdose of whiskey and morphine and grave number three belonged to her. The last grave was that of a man who was shot through the heart during a gambling argument.
It is hard to imagine the Sandpoint of today being one of the roughest places in the nation.
All photographs have been used with permission of the Bonner County Museum. |
