In an old mill town on Puget Sound north of Seattle, a stretch of brick road is crossed by a vintage railroad bridge. It’s the only part of the landscape in Everett, Washington that remains unchanged from one of the darkest days in the city’s history more than 100 years ago.
“I can’t think of anywhere else in the city where any other brick street part or portion might still survive,” said local historian Neil Anderson. “It’s the last, and a lot of history walked over those bricks for the last 100 and some years.”
The roadway and bridge, at the west end of Hewitt Avenue just north of the old Everett railroad depot, function as an unintentional frame containing a view of Everett’s working waterfront – in particular, the section of the harbor where a pier called City Dock once stood.
The Everett Massacre
It was on City Dock and in the waters just west of it where gunfire erupted between law enforcement on shore and labor activists aboard two steam vessels.
It’s unclear who fired first, but when it was all over, the so-called Everett Massacre of November 5, 1916 had claimed the lives of at least seven men. The event was one of many in the Pacific Northwest from the late 19th century to the early 20th century, when labor and management clashed, often with deadly result.
In that era, Sheriff Don McRae amassed what’s been called a private army – hundreds of civilian men from a business club who were deputized and armed in order to tamp down labor activism, and even just plain free speech, in Everett.
On the day of the Everett Massacre and moments before the shooting started, those deputies – and anyone else tagging along or otherwise taking part in the public demonstrations that day – had just marched down Hewitt Avenue, their feet drumming on the old bricks – the same ones which remain in place there today – and the tops of their heads clearing the steel trusses of the old bridge, which also, remarkably, still stands unchanged and in place.
“It became a real wound in Everett,” said lifelong Everett resident, local historian and Anderson’s friend Jack O’Donnell. The Everett Massacre “was one of those things that people in the city would not speak about for years.”
“Everett was a real mill town at that time,” O’Donnell continued, as he stood on the old brick road and took in the view to the west, framed by the bridge. “There were so many mills that became highly unionized, and there were a lot of real skilled workers like the shingle weavers, and they were having a strike.”
Wobblies Join The Strike
It was that strike which ultimately led to members of Industrial Workers of the World – known as the “IWW” or “Wobblies” – coming to Everett in 1916 to take part in public speaking events at the corner of Hewitt Avenue and Wetmore Street, about five blocks from the brick roadway and railroad bridge. The Wobblies came to town with the intention of speaking in public and being arrested for doing so, and then being jailed – in hopes of clogging the jail and defeating Everett’s efforts to stifle free speech. A similar thing had happened on the other side of the state in Spokane in 1909, and the Wobblies had claimed victory.
On October 30, 1916, a large group of Wobblies came to Everett, anticipating arrest. Instead, the 41 men were savagely beaten and run out of town by Sheriff Don McRae and dozens of his deputies. The union men were not arrested or charged with a crime, and there was no due process – only knocked out teeth, dislocated bones, and internal injuries from blows and kicks rained down on the men.
The two boats of Wobblies heading north from Seattle to Everett on the morning November 5 were going back in search of vengeance.
“So when the VERONA, the first of the two vessels, came in, they said ‘You can’t disembark here,’” O’Donnell recounted, describing what Sheriff McRae shouted at the Wobblies trying to land at City Dock.
“And they said ‘The hell we can’t,’” O’Donnell continued, repeating what the Wobblies reportedly told Sheriff McRae. “At some point, a shot was fired because both sides were armed.”
The gunfire didn’t last long, but two deputies were fatally wounded on shore. On the VERONA, five men died, but more may have fallen over the side and drowned – though no additional bodies were ever recovered, and no men were reported missing.
Will the Landscape and Viewscape Survive?
The landscape in question, perhaps other than the street and sidewalk right-of-way running beneath the bridge, belongs to BNSF Railway.
Railroad officials are planning replace the aging bridge, which dates back to 1910, with an earthen berm. This would mean filling in the area beneath the bridge and eliminating the historic landscape where Everett Massacre participants marched down Hewitt Avenue to meet the boats full of labor activists. Tracks over the current vintage bridge carry BNSF freight trains and local commuter trains.
Plans for altering the historic landscape are a joint effort of BNSF Railway and the City of Everett. In an email, city of Everett spokesperson Simone Tarver shared some of the project details.
The park is “being paid for and built by BNSF,” Tarver wrote.” Parks (officially, Everett Parks and Facilities) has been working closely with BNSF on the design.”
It’s unclear from Tarver’s email if the historic significance of the hardscape of the bricks where participants marched and of the so- called “viewscape” which retains its 1916 look (and which frames the view of the site where the Everett Massacre took place) were taken into consideration at any point so far in public or private discussions related to the design of the berm. This possible significance is likely to come up when the project and any necessary permits are reviewed in a process mandated by the State of Washington.
For those who believe preservation of places where difficult parts of history happened is key to never forgetting the lessons taught by that difficult history, there may still be time to convince BNSF Railway and the City of Everett that bricks and railroad bridge – the only remaining landscape from the Everett Massacre – is worth saving.
Otherwise, the landscape, like the history of the Everett Massacre itself, will simply vanish.
“Not very many people have heard about the Everett Massacre,” said Neil Anderson. “And when you start digging into the history, a lot of people have no clue of where that event took place.”