This day in history: Thieves were stealing cedar trees. Former KKK grand dragon in Spokane alleged he was cheated

From 1976: A new breed of rustlers were prowling the backwoods of North Idaho: Cedar rustlers.

“A boy becomes a man when he steals his first cedar tree,” was apparently a local saying in Latah County, according to the Associated Press.

“A rustler can make $200 to $300 on the black market for a pickup full of illicit cedar,” said the Associated Press. “… One thief bragged to a newsman that he made $700 from a night’s work. Rustlers sneak into forests on old logging roads.”

The problem had become so pervasive that the Latah County sheriff hired a “cedar cop” to patrol the woods. He made about 28 arrests over the summer, even though the rustlers used CB radios to warn each other that the cedar cop was in the area. Most received only small fines.

The rustlers usually took only the butt of the tree – about 20 feet of the base – and left the rest to rot on land owned by timber companies or the federal government.

The locals barely tried to hide the practice. One softball team in Bovill, Idaho, called themselves “The Ol’ Cedar Thieves.”

From 1926: O.H. Carpenter of Spokane filed a $6,280 back-pay suit against his former employer: the Ku Klux Klan.

Carpenter was a “grand dragon” of the local Klan for almost two years, but said he was paid only $5,622 of his promised salary of $10,500. He also claimed the Klan owed him $450 for his work as “king kleagle” in which he was promised $1 for every member he signed up.

He also claimed he advanced $952 to the Klan for office rent and was never reimbursed.

“This is the first time the Ku Klux Klan has figured in the courts here,” noted The Spokesman-Review.