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By Librarian Alyssa, Omak Library

This week in history we are going to examine the Leavenworth Echo newspaper printed July 28th, 1922. We will be examining two articles, each fighting to win. 

With fire season upon us, try to  imagine how fires used to be attended to in the past. Our first article examines just that, with the title Large Fire on Snowall Creek, the article briefly talks about the difficulty of containing a fire in that location. It is easy to forget that as dangerous as fire season always is, it used to be a lot harder to manage. 

Snowall Creek is west of Leavenworth, sandwiched between the Cradle and Highchair Mountains. Local forestry responded to a call about a fire that started Saturday afternoon. They  sent 20 men to try and contain the fire but Ranger Brender had to send word to Leavenworth for 20 more men to be sent out to try and contain the flames. Dude Brown and Walt Rollings were tasked with packing and preparing a bunch of horses to assist with the efforts. The location is remote and the need for supplies required that these horses be heavily supplied in order to assist the men fighting the fire. It was the only known fire at the time so they were able to focus their efforts towards this fire. 

Imagine with the amount of fires we have right now having to send out horses to provide supplies to all our responders. It would be a heroic effort not only for the men fighting the fires but finding horses that are capable of being around the fires without panicking. We are fortunate to have modern technology to assist with these fires. 

Snowall Fire

Our next article is about a big boxing match. The headliner boxers were Eddie Pinkman and Morgan Jones. Eddie Pinkman was a Seattle resident born in Duluth, Minnesota. Pinkman’s professional boxing career started in 1914 then he retired in 1916 to try and become an actor in Hollywood. When this didn’t work out he returned to boxing once more. His record as of July 24th, 1922, was 103 wins (54 by knockout), 4 losses, and 45 draws. 

Morgan Jones was a Tacoma native who’s boxing career started in 1918. By the time of this fight Jones had 18 wins, 8 loses, 19 draws. The other boxers who fought that night were Phil Murray of Seattle, Floyd Culley of Wenatchee, Veter Barbano, and a few other unnamed people. Although this article does not talk about the fight I went ahead and looked up the results of the fight in the next article published by Leavenworth Echo on August 4th, 1922. The result was Morgan won by points over Pinkman, Bud Mitchell won over Phil Murray by knock out, Schlafli won over Culley in second round, Jack King won over Young Anthony, Young Veter and Doc Snell drew, and Spike Carney (formerly of Wenatchee) was introduced for the first time. The article goes into detail about the fight and it looks like it was an amazing fight between all of those who participated. The crowds left satisfied and pumped from the fights. That was the last fight that Eddie Pinkman has a record for pro boxing, according to BoxRec.com. We don’t know from this little clip if he fought again or where at. Morgan Jones continued to box until 1929.

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Omak Librarian Alyssa writes a monthly blogpost about NCW history using information she researches and gathers through the Washington Digital Newspapers,which is free to library patrons.The resource offers free online access to articles dating back to territorial times and contains more than 6,500 articles and 50,000 reels of microfilm.

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