'Hangtown' often gave visitors a rough welcome

Today, Sandpoint, Idaho is known for its beautiful lake, and majestic mountains. It is known as a good place to live and raise children. To be sure, there are times when voices are lifted in protest, and some people become somewhat vociferous in defending what they feel is right.

The good people of Sandpoint have been quarrelling over one issue for what seems like time immemorial. Every red blooded person has called forth the words of "The Bard" when they hear, bypass. Silently, if not verbally, they ask themselves; "To be, or not to be: That is the question." Though tempers may flare, to date, there have been no threats of lynching, or bodily harm done to those with opposing views. That is not like our Sandpoint.

The Sandpoint of old had a different reputation. As early as 1884, Sandpoint had garnered quite a negative 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." He continued, "… 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 (Bob) Weeks, was '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."

Major Fred B. Reed confirmed this 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 'Hang Town,' and it was over there that we had our necktie parties." Reed told about the time that six men were hanged, at one time.

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 the Indians had buried their dead 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; could there have been foul play? This accounts for grave number one. The red-headed woman and her lover, had quarreled over the dead man, and the woman shot her boyfriend. 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. It makes the "by pass" dispute look like an adult game of tiddlywinks.