News Article, Crook County's Reign of Terror

This newspaper article was published in the Portland Evening Telegram on November 21, 1902. Titled “Crook County’s Reign of Terror,” the bulk of the piece consists of the reminiscences of an unnamed source about a vigilante episode that took place in the vicinity of Prineville in the early 1880s.

The trouble began in March 1882 when A.H. Crooks and his son-in-law Stephen Jory began building a fence near Grizzly Butte. A rancher by the name of Lucius Langdon did not appreciate Crooks and Jory fencing what he considered his land, and, as the article above states, he “ordered them to desist.” They departed, but soon returned armed with revolvers. Langdon went out to meet them, shotgun in hand. While accounts vary as to precisely what happened next, all agree that Langdon shot the two men dead.

These killings sparked what local rancher Jim Blakely called “a rule by gun and rope that is one of the blackest chapters in Oregon’s history.” A posse was organized and Langdon was taken into custody. Langdon’s hired man, W.H. Harrison, accompanied Langdon and the posse back to Prineville, where Langdon was lodged in a hotel under the supervision of a deputy sheriff. That night, a group of masked men entered the hotel and shot Langdon to death. Although Harrison had nothing to do with the deaths of Crooks and Jory, the masked men, who called themselves the Vigilantes, put a rope around his neck, dragged him through town, and hung his corpse from a bridge.

Emboldened by the lynching of Langdon and Harrison, the Vigilantes committed several other killings, described in the newspaper article reproduced above. The writer states that “the whole county was in a state of terror, and people were almost afraid to sleep at night.” Tired of the carnage and threats, local residents organized an opposition group dubbed the “Moonshiners,” so named because they kept watch at night. The Vigilantes threatened to kill the Moonshiners, especially rancher Jim Blakely, one of the group’s organizers.

The conflict came to a head in the spring of 1884, when Blakely led several dozen armed Moonshiners to confront the Vigilantes in the streets of Prineville. He called them out, but none of the Vigilantes answered. That act of confrontation proved to be the end of the Vigilantes’ reign in Crook County. Blakely was elected sheriff shortly thereafter. Many of the Vigilantes left the county—none, however, were successfully prosecuted for their actions.

Further Reading:
Blakely, James M., and Herbert Lundy. “When the Juniper Trees Bore Fruit.” Oregonian, March 12, 1939.

Brogan, Phil F. East of the Cascades. Portland, Oreg., 1964.

Written by Cain Allen, © Oregon Historical Society, 2005.