A Glimpse of History: The Last Gunfight on Orcas

By Tom Welch

Two desperate bank robbers from British Columbia fled to Orcas Island on July 9th, 1913. Stopping at the dock at Orcas landing, they left a small, white skiff tied to the float and boarded a steamer for Bellingham. One returned a day later to discover that the skiff had gone adrift, been recovered, and the contents examined by local men in an effort to identify the owners. Among the possessions found aboard was a pocket book containing clippings of robberies in B.C., and a letter identifying one of the men as an International Worker of the World and a Socialist, and threatening all ‘plutocrats’ with death. Alarmed at the discovery, local men had sent for Sheriff Steven Boyce at Friday Harbor.

Boyce, his deputy, Deputy Customs Inspector Culver, and several others gathered weapons, borrowed a ‘fast gasoline launch’, and sped to Orcas. The robber met up with Boyce and the others on the porch of the Orcas Hotel, where they exchanged gunfire. All the shots missed in the wild flurry, and the robber jumped over the porch rail and fled into the woods.

Pressing two local newspapermen into service as Deputies, the Sheriff and the others from Friday Harbor surrounded the hotel that evening and stationed themselves along the dirt road leading up the hill. Around 2 a.m. the next morning, while it was still pitch dark, the Sheriff and Virgil Frits, one of two newspapermen in the party (the other was Jack Geoghagan), challenged a man walking up the road. Two shots were fired at the man, but the robber escaped again into the woods. The excitement now at a fever pitch, the Sheriff and his men bustled to and fro, gathering more arms and ammunition for what they assumed would be a deadly shootout.

Around dawn, a few hours later, a carefree and happy fisherman shoved off in a small boat from the beach below the dock. Whistling merrily, the man began rowing towards Shaw Island as the Sheriff and his armed posse looked on. Suddenly, a local native appeared, waving his arms as he ran down the road, yelling that his boat was being stolen! The Sheriff and others quickly realized the ‘happy fisherman’ was, in fact, the robber, and that he was about to get away. Rushing to their boats, the Sheriff and his men raced across the channel, but were too late to catch the man before he landed on the shore of Shaw Island and escaped into the woods.

Searches of Shaw Island commenced, all residents were told to remove their boats from the beaches, and the U.S. Revenue Cutter ‘Arcata’, along with the Canadian patrol boats ‘Faloma’ and ‘Winamac,’ began patrolling along the shoreline. Local residents told of seeing the robber on the shores of Canoe Island, then at Burke’s, a local marina and restaurant where he had eaten several meals. Still one step ahead of the Sheriff and his posse, the robber was next seen by the photographer McCormick from the deck of the ‘Arcata’ as he strolled of the woods, walked into a small orchard, picked a few cherries, then stepped into a boat on the beach. Rowing across a small bay, barely a hundred yards ahead of his shouting pursuers, the robber escaped once again into the woods of Shaw Island.

A few days later the robber’s lair, containing several bloody bandages, was located. Still no robber was found, but men at a fishing camp where he had eaten breakfast told the authorities he appeared to have some buckshot wounds on his neck and shoulder, and his coat was torn. Seen next at Hoffman’s boathouse, the robber escaped before the posse surrounded and searched the building. Interviews with Shaw residents proved frustrating to the Sheriff because, as he later said, the robber ‘had more friends on Shaw than he did, and nobody would give him any information’. The search continued for two weeks with no results, and the Sheriff finally gave up. In an article in the ‘San Juan Islander’ of July 25, 1913, Sheriff Steven Boyce  said he quit the search in disgust, that Shaw Islanders were aiding the outlaw and refusing to help the authorities, and that he believed the man was still on Shaw.

So ended the last ‘gunfight’ on Orcas Island, with the successful escape of a lone, wily criminal to Shaw Island.