Eagle Rock was a wind-blown frontier town in 1882 when Baptist Missionary Rebecca Mitchell stepped off the Utah and Northern, her daughter Bessie in hand. “It was” she said, “a row of company houses, built by railroad employees, with shanties here and there.” She noticed “a few business houses,” and of course, “the ever-present saloon plying its trade.”
In most western towns at the time, saloons “formed a liberal share of the principal business houses,” and Eagle Rock was no exception. Catering to construction crews on the new rail road bridge, the Eagle Rock saloons provided more than just places for this largely single and male population to drink: they also served food and offered companionship. That is not to say, however, that alcoholic revelry wasn’t a high priority.
Former Idaho Falls mayor and city historian, Barzilla W. Clark described a particularly raucous occasion when two different saloons changed ownership on the same day. The doors of both “were thrown wide open with free drinks, and the drinkers caroused from one place to another.” As the infamous day wore on, other businesses started closing their doors, then barricading their windows. Horses broke loose from the hitching rails one after another. A team ran away with a dray wagon and tore up two Utah and Northern switches. “One man working in a gravel pit got a load of buckshot, and another had his heel shot off. . . a playful bunch of gun-throwers went down to the ‘girls’ house’ and shot off all the lamp chimneys.”
In their town meetings, the Eagle Rock citizenry loudly complained, “There are no restrictions on liquor selling and gambling.” In order to claim an orderly town, “the reckless firing of firearms at all hours of the night had to be stopped.” But complaints hurled at the local troublemakers was spitting into the wind.
In a 1933 interview for The Idaho Falls Times, Adelia B. Scott described those times. “The law was a matter of convenience,” she said. “If it became convenient to break the law, it was broken. If it was convenient to punish, that was done, or if it happened to be inconvenient, or if the person charged had some influence or was of some prominence, the law and the punishment were forgotten.”
Possible architects of Eagle Rock’s early brand of “convenient justice” were two saloon owners: DeForest C. (Uncle Dick) Chamberlain and Ed F. Winn.
An ex-Confederate soldier, Dick Chamberlain had drifted west after the Civil War, experimenting first in the excitement of the Black Hills, then in Leadville, and in other parts of Colorado before finally settling on Eagle Rock. Although his law enforcement credentials were based primarily on his “physically powerful build,” Chamberlain’s supporters warned he was “a man not to be trifled with.” He was, they concluded, “a more powerful factor for the restoration and maintenance of law and order than the constituted authorities.”
Eldora Shoemaker Keefer, Eagle Rock resident and matriarch of the clan after whom Keefer’s Island is named, did not mince her words: “Dick Chamberlain kept a rough house and many fights and shooting scrapes took place in his building.”
But if Chamberlain was the unofficial enforcer, Ed Winn was the real deal. In 1881, the newly-elected sheriff of Oneida County, William Harrison Homer, appointed Winn his Chief Deputy for Eagle Rock. A handsome, independent young man when he left his Pennsylvania home at eighteen, Winn worked his way west with the railroads, and ended up in the boom town on the Snake River. He was now part of the corps of officers that Homer needed to enforce the laws in his jurisdiction.
But law enforcement being what it was at that time—a highly visible yet low paying occupation—Winn’s appointment coincided with his proprietorship of The Union Pacific Billiard Hall and Saloon, a more lucrative enterprise. And, within a few months, Winn had a new partner. According to The Idaho Register (22 Oct 1881), Dick Chamberlain “has closed his saloon and purchased an interest in the billiard hall and saloon of Ed. F. Winn. They are doing a nice business.”
Chamberlain and Winn would become well acquainted with the missionary Rebecca Mitchell and her friend Adelia Scott. Both active in the ranks of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, these women were working hard to shut down local drinking establishments. At regular meetings held in the Scott’s home on Cliff Street, they planned their marches and demonstrations.
Perhaps during one of those meetings, or maybe in the dead of night when the town’s sober citizenry was at home, the long WCTU banner went missing. The next morning, as merchants, early shoppers, and late drinkers filled the board sidewalks, a gaggle of spectators collected near the busy end of Eagle Rock Street. Laughter and loud shouts indicated only one thing: the missing banner had been found. And to the delight of everyone in the crowd, it had been stretched—in its full grandeur—across the entrance to the town’s most popular saloon.
Passionately driven by standards that represented the best of what American towns and cities were striving to be at the end of the 19th Century, Mitchell and Scott, unperturbed by the latest shenanigan from the open-saloon crowd, continued to work on behalf of their newly adopted community.
A widow heavily clad in black dress, Rebecca Mitchell (pictured above) was a tenacious little tornado who, among her many endeavors, educated children of Eagle Rock’s original residents in her Providence Mission School. And, from boxes stuffed with books–gifts and donations intended for the school that overwhelmed every nook, cranny, and under-bed space in her former-saloon-turned-apartment—she arguably created the town’s first library by loaning the books to anyone who was interested.
But for Mrs. Mitchell, the missionary, her crowning achievement was successfully raising the funds for a new Baptist Church that was built within three years of her arrival in Eagle Rock.
Mitchell’s companion, Adelia B. Scott, was a strikingly pretty woman. With her elegant frame fashionably draped in long dresses and high collars, she stood tall in a rigid Victorian posture—taller still when she chose to cover her neatly coiffed gray hair with a large veiled or feathered hat.
Active in her husband’s business, Mrs. Scott was also recognized as a woman of determination and strong character. Civic duties her specialty, she took over Kate Curley’s Village Improvement Society after Curley’s untimely death, and with the resources of the VIS, procured The Island, a piece of real estate in the river, and developed it into a fine city park.
Her grandest achievement, however, reached beyond the community and positioned her in Idaho history. In 1898, the same year Idaho granted women suffrage, Mrs. Scott was elected Justice of the Peace, a first for any woman in the state.
As an elected Justice, Mrs. Scott held her own. She proved to her detractors, that when armed with knowledge of the law and statutes and endowed with a penchant for its language, she was a woman not to be trifled with. She had so impressed Mayor A. T. Shane with her skill and manner that at the end of her term as Justice, he appointed her police magistrate.
Though it still struggles against the wax and wane of a century and a half of fortune, the original railroad town of Eagle Rock, platted as the Winn Addition to the City of Idaho Falls remains. A bit worse for the wear, it has been chopped and reshaped through the decades: Extra lanes added to Capital Avenue took out a row of houses near the river, one of which was the home of Ed Winn; and on its east side, warehouses and manufacturers replaced entire residential blocks.
Editor’s note: this piece was edited for length. Visit www.idahofallsmagazine.com for the full article.
References: Cox, Cheryl A., Second Stories Revisited: Historical Narratives of Idaho Falls Women, Published by author, c 2006.
Cox, Cheryl A., Showdown at Rawhide: The Ed F. Winn Story, A thesis in partial requirement for Master of Arts degree, Idaho State University, 2004.