Creede Colorado's first piano, 1892

THE FIRST PIANO IN THE NEW CAMP
The Illustrated Police News
April 9, 1892

(Click image to enlarge)

reed's first piano

Soapy Smith saved many newspaper articles, which still remain in the Smith family collections. In my personal collection is an issue of the Police Illustrated News, April 9, 1892. In that issue is a story on Creede, Colorado and their first piano. Obviously from the drawing above this was big news in the new camp.

      Below is the accompanying article.

CREEDE'S FIRST PIANO.

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      A piano came into the new Colorado boom city of Creede a fortnight ago, the "advance courier," as the Daily Crusher declared in a column article on the subject the next day, "of a long line of musical instruments which will make these mountain fastnesses ring with melody, and create a symphonous accompaniment to the everlasting music of the resonant steel discs of the saw mill up Poverty Gulch. The piano has come to stay. It is set up in a dance hall, where its tired strings are nightly hammered by a long-haired virtouso, who sweeps out the corks in the early dawn, places the ''dead drunks' tenderly under the wooden bunks in the retiring rooms, and acts as tout for his rendezvous when the stage whirls in in the afternoon."
      There is much of open violation of law in Creede, and as the Crusher's rival, the Prospector, stated in its issue, "the midnight air is rasped by the assassin's bullet. Shootings are common enough, and there is not much of police protection. There is, however, an association of bearded, reputable, determined men, who never fail to receive respect from desperadoes when they find themselves compelled to resort to the vigilantes' ultimatum. Invitations to leave the camp are promptly compelled with. 'you have twenty-four hours in which to leave town,' wrote a committee of this kind once in Cheyenne's active days. 'Gentlemen,' came the brief and scholarly response, in fine Italian hand, 'gentlemen, if my mule doesn't buck I'll not need more than tweenty-four minutes.' An intimation of a public desire here is sufficient to meet with prompt obedience."

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November 9, 2016,

Creede: pages 11, 63, 73, 75, 77, 79, 82-84, 87-89, 90, 94, 131, 137, 183, 197-235, 236-42.

"We put armed guards on all the wharves,” Graves continued, with orders to shoot on sight if anyone tried to escape in a boat. Thus escape by land or water was cut off…. Some tried to get away in boats and were caught by our guards. Some tried the Pass, and Heney and Hawkins got them, and the rest we got by an organized search of the town…, except a few who took to the mountains where we shall starve them out. But we got more than we could find jail room for, so we selected thirty-one of the leaders, and let the rest go with a warning to get out of town, and keep out. Now our job is to save the men we have in jail from the infuriated mob, which is clamoring for their blood."

— Samuel H. Graves, president of the White Pass & Yukon Railway
Alias Soapy Smith, p. 562.

DECEMBER 29

1812: The USS Constitution wins a sea battle with the British HMS Java 30 miles off the coast of Brazil. Before Commodore William Bainbridge orders the sinking of the Java he had her wheel removed to replace the one the Constitution lost during the battle.

1813: The British burn Buffalo, New York during the War of 1812.

1837: Canadian militiamen destroyed the Caroline, a U.S. steamboat docked at Buffalo, New York.

1845: U.S. President James Polk signs legislation making Texas (comprised of the present state of Texas and part of New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming) the 28th state of the Union, with the provision that the area (389,166 square miles) should be divided into no more than five states "of convenient size."

1848: U.S. President James Polk turns on the first gas light at the White House.

1851: The first American Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) is organized, in Boston, Massachusetts.

1879: Charlie Parkhurst, a stage driver in the rough trails of the California Sierra Nevada Mountains, is found dead of natural causes. More astonishing to those who knew Charlie, is the after death discovery that Charley was a woman.

1883: Soapy Smith operates the prize package soap racket along Congress Street in Tucson, Arizona.

1890: The “Wounded Knee Creek massacre” takes place on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, when Colonel James Forsyth of the U.S. 7th Cavalry attempts to disarm Chief Big Foot and his followers. At least 128 men, women, and children of the Lakota Sioux had been killed and 33 wounded. 25 soldiers were killed, and 39 wounded. It is believed that some of the soldiers were the victims of friendly fire, as the shooting took place at close range in chaotic conditions, but there were deaths by arrows. At least twenty troopers were awarded the coveted Medal of Honor in this, the last battle of the Indian Wars.