130 Years Ago

by Thomas Libby

On May 11, 1880, Walter J. Crow killed five people in a gunfight at Mussel Slough in Tulare County. What became known as the Mussel Slough Tragedy encouraged anti-railroad sentiment and President Theodore Roosevelt's eventual promotion of antitrust legislation.

The trouble traces back to the federal government's grant of 25,000 acres to Southern Pacific for railroad development in 1866. The company then encouraged settlers to work the land, implying that they could purchase it later for about $2.50 an acre. When the railroad eventually offered the parcels for sale at up to $35 per acre, the settlers cried foul and headed to court. Late in 1879, Southern Pacific prevailed in litigation presided over by Ninth Circuit Judge Lorenzo Sawyer - who owned shares of Southern Pacific and was beholden for much of his career to Southern Pacific President (and former Governor) Leland Stanford. In Southern Pac. R. Co. v. Orton (32 F. 457), Judge Sawyer ruled that states could not control the ultra vires acts of corporations.

The following spring, at a picnic to rally support for the settlers, gunfire broke out. Gunslingers as notorious as Wyatt Earp, Jesse James, Billy the Kid, and Wild Bill Hickok never killed as many men at one time as did Crow - a railroad sympathizer who himself was murdered by "parties unknown" later that evening.

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