Jim Kershner’s This Day in History

From our archives, 100 years ago

More than 50 Spokane high school students got into a bloody brawl at the Garfield train depot.

The students were on their way to an athletic tournament in Pullman when the train stopped in Garfield. A Garfield student ran up to a train car’s open window and swiped Spokane school pennants.

The enraged Spokane students chased him through the streets and all the way into a house. They found him – but not the pennants – and grabbed his hat, which they carried back to the train.

On the train platform, Garfield adults tried to grab the hat. The brawl began in earnest when a Garfield workman started swinging a saw, gashing several people, including a Spokane choir director. The paper said the combatants armed themselves with “weapons of many descriptions, including ponderous two-by-fours.”

The trainmen finally succeeded in getting the Spokane students back on the train. The contest was called a draw, because neither the pennants nor the hat were recovered by their owners.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1804: The Lewis and Clark expedition to explore the Louisiana Territory as well as the Pacific Northwest left camp near present-day Hartford, Ill.