100 years ago in Eastern Washington: A once-wealthy prospector died at the county ‘poor house,’ leaving a sad, mysterious story behind

J.W. “Colonel” Crummy, 91, died at the county “poor house” in Spangle, without a dollar to his name.

One of his few possessions was an engraved miner’s pick, which said that Col. Crummy was the original discoverer of the fabulously rich San Juan gold field in southwestern Colorado. The engraving also says he discovered the Silver Creek gold mine in the region.

“From what we were able to learn, the aged prospector had had three fortunes and was probably rated as a millionaire at one time,” the poor house superintendent said.

Nobody knew how his fortune had dissipated, but he had been in Spokane for about 15 years and was destitute. The superintendent said he was originally from Ireland and had no relatives that he was aware of.

The superintendent said that he was donating the pick to the city museum.

From the transit beat: A Spokesman-Review reporter took a ride on the Lidgerwood jitney bus to check on reports of terrible service and miserable conditions.

The ride, during rush hour, took two hours to get from Lidgerwood to downtown. The bus was filled with the noxious aromas of “motor exhaust, hot oil, groceries, bad breath and vegetables, particularly the pungency of the well-known allium cepa (onion).”

The bus was “loaded to suffocation,” leaving many of the passengers standing.

The bus lurched wildly, and passengers were “glad when they reached the bottom of the hill with no casualties.”

One woman, in a black plush hat, told the SR that the jitney had once lurched so violently that it “precipitated her into the unwilling lap of a timid little man.”

She summed up the situation by saying the jitney was a “a hell of a service,” and she did not mean that as compliment.