If you have ever wondered about the land before there was a city, go to Keefer’s Island, that sliver of rock in John’s Hole fore bay. Notice the black basalt layered with soil and sand that still supports bunch grass, sagebrush, and water willow, a river environment that stretched in all directions, windblown and open.
Then, just upstream, take the floating foot path—a seasonal opportunity of course-- below John’s Hole Bridge that hugs the steep basaltic walls before twisting up onto the rim where enough grass and brush remains to erupt into spring wildflowers.
From this vantage, a long S-turn bends southward, a section of river that early travelers called Black Rock Canyon or simply Black Rock. Often into late summer, muddy runoffs from the upper drainages carried deadfall that crashed through those bends.
Driftwood, salvaged when the water subsided, ended up in the cabins and homestead of early settlers.
In 1866, a detritus-laden current jabbed at a wooden bridge that spanned the narrowest distance between the walls of lower Black Rock. But safely above the heavy water, for miles in either direction, freight wagons, bull trains, and stagecoaches waited to pay Matt Taylor’s tolls, filling the dusty air with the bellow of oxen, the rattle of harness, and the verbal foulness of mule skinners and bull whackers.
Due partly to Taylor’s success, his replacement was already on the move. Northward across the river plain, like a fast burning fuse, the Utah and Northern Railroad was aimed straight for his crossing and the proposed site of its own bridge.
With enthusiasm that defied caution, the railroad, followed by a wild and boisterous tent city, drove their stakes deep. On a grid scraped into the sagebrush, houses were put together for company employees. Then, a business street—liberally intermixed with saloons-- paralleled the tracks. Soon, the smell of new wood permeated the air, and the prevailing southwest wind scattered the hard sounds of ringing steel across the plain.
In June 1879, Ed Francis Winn stepped off the Utah and Northern into the bustle of Eagle Rock, the railroad’s newest boomtown.
Having been raised on adventurous tales of the American frontier, he could not wait beyond eighteen to leave his home in Brownsville, Pennsylvania. He made for Omaha, Nebraska and found work as a carpenter with the Union Pacific. Finally, ending up in Oneida County, Idaho Territory, he joined the bridge construction crews bound for Eagle Rock.
By all accounts, Ed Winn was likeable.
Charming and quick witted, he had a way with a story. In a wild environment dominated by young men with regular wages and some time on their hands, good company paid its own way, and Winn made a lot of friends: Robert and “Blackjack” Anderson, “Uncle Dick” Chamberlain, W.H. B. “Alphabet” Crow, Louis Elg, Jake Keefer, and William E. Wheeler, men who featured prominently in the development of a permanent town. Even Winn was tapped as Eagle Rock’s first fire chief.
At first, it was about getting a foothold.
A few, like Chamberlain and Elg, opened saloons. Though Winn followed their example and set himself up as proprietor of the Union Pacific Billiard Hall and Saloon, his claim to fame came from a different direction entirely.
In 1880, Oneida County spread east from the Snake River to Wyoming and stretched north from Utah to Montana. The country was rough and largely uninhabited except for the railroad towns, a few settlements, and some farms and ranches. Yet, Oneida’s sparse population contained more than a fair share of outlaws, outcasts, and drifters who threatened the safety of travelers and a growing influx of settlers.
Early homesteaders David and Emely Bybee knew this threat first hand. They recalled strangers who stopped at their farm for water, used what they needed then tipped the barrels over and wasted what was left. The scavengers forced their way into the house and demanded something to eat. Frightened, Emely threw blankets over her children to muffle their small noises while she and her husband waited for the intruders to leave.
To traverse his jurisdiction, newly elected Oneida County sheriff William Harrison Homer relied on the railroad. To enforce the law, it was the cadre of deputies who resided in the towns along the rail line on whom he depended. Homer looked for good men.
On July 5, 1881, just two years after his arrival, Ed F. Winn was appointed Deputy Sheriff for Oneida County and Chief Deputy for Eagle Rock. Knowing that it would take more than his charm and quick wit to impress Sheriff Homer, the new deputy dug deeply for a certain arrogant tenacity that appeared to have served him well.
Over a century later, his exploits still intrigue us, like the investigation that took a gruesome twist. In February 1884, the newspaper carried the account of two men who came into Eagle Rock and “claimed they had killed a man named Cooper in selfdefense.”
To await the results of a grand jury, the men, identified only as Thompson and “Teton” Jackson, were jailed while a party of several deputies, Ed Winn, Dick Wilbur, J. Ed Smith and Bob Tarter, were sent to Teton Basin to retrieve Cooper’s body. Leaving on the 2nd of February, they were gone eleven days. It was a terrible trip “through snow and snowstorm,” but they did find Cooper’s body. Because of the deep snow, they chose to sever the head, return with it, and bury what remained.
The newspaper subsequently reported that an examination of the head did not correspond with the story that Thompson and
“Teton” Jackson had told when they turned themselves in to the law. The men were put on trial, but never convicted. Cooper still remains a mystery.
But as stark and grisly as his job could get, it was more often a situation of pluck and courage. Sheriff Homer, a large and impressive man, performed his job without benefit of pageantry or posse, and he asked the same of his chief deputy. Transporting Will Stokes, an accused murderer, was such an occasion.
Will Stokes was a cattle drover hired by a company from Texas. He was stationed with a large herd near present day Aberdeen when he, in the company of some cowboy friends, got into serious trouble at a local dance hall over the affections of one of the girls. Thinking that his rival was reaching for a gun instead of the handkerchief in his back pocket, Stokes pulled his firearm and shot the man in the jaw. It was a nasty wound that eventually proved fatal. Stokes was charged with murder.
The trial was to be held in Challis. The judge who had approved the change of venue warned Winn that company cowboys were planning to bust Stokes loose. It was the deputy’s job to see that the accused prisoner got from Blackfoot to Challis.
Putting Stokes in handcuffs and leg irons, Winn pulled his five-foot four-inch frame up into the stagecoach and sat beside him. In Winn’s own words:
I told Stokes after we started from Blackfoot what the judge told me and I warned Stokes that if they made any break that I would get him shot first then fight it out with the others.
When we arrived at Goose Creek a bunch of cowboys came up to the stage. One of them started to open the door and I told him to stop and keep his hands off the door.
Stokes told them that he was all O.K. and was pleased to go to Challis. They handed me some cigarettes to give to Stokes and we pulled out to Challis. There was nothing more happened. We arrived safe and sound at Challis. I did not have any trouble on the route.
Ed Winn became a legend in his own time. He garnered high praise for the “colorful role” he played in ridding the country of “dangerous characters” and “fighting against lawlessness on Idaho’s frontier.” He served under several county sheriffs and even one term as Deputy U.S. Marshall. The Bingham Lodge No. 14 of the International Order of Odd Fellows (I.O.O.F) published his profile in An Illustrated History of the State of Idaho, 1899.
Yet, the acclaim that had been so easily attained in in the beginning eventually exceeded his reach. Early on, he had divested himself of the saloon business, but was never free of the business of a saloon, and he struggled. On February 18, 1935, beneath headlines that promised economic relief and the chance for a legal drink of alcohol, Depression era Idaho Falls learned of the death of “one of its best known residents.”
Years later, there was talk of a pair of six shooters that had been on display in the window of a local business. Believed to be Colt 44s, their holsters were swiveled onto a gun belt that enabled the wearer to “shoot from the hip.”
And gossips said the old deputy liked to strut around, decked out in the belt, and posture as an old-time gunfighter. “Still a threat,” they whispered, “to the whiskey bottles he threw into the river for target practice.”
If the guns had been Winn’s, no one really knows for sure. To rediscover those times, we can only rely on the bits and pieces we have left of the stories—our islands in the river so to speak. And, we must be ready to protect what is left of what we were.
Sources: Cox, Cheryl A., Second Stories
Revisited: Historical Narratives of Idaho Falls Women, Chapter 1, “The River,” Idaho Falls, c 2006.
Cox, Cheryl A., Showdown at Rawhide: The Ed Winn Story, Thesis prepared for Master of Arts, Idaho State University, 2004.