4/26/2005:
We’re spending a few days looking at some of the state’s history concerning alcohol. Yesterday we discussed the Bismarck booze bust of 1907. Today, we’re backing up a couple decades. On this date in 1877, Bismarck saloonkeeper, Peter Branigan*, was supposed to be executed. He had killed a soldier named Massengale in his saloon on Christmas and was almost lynched by angry soldiers that night. Branigan was found guilty in February, escaped from jail in March, and was caught in Audubon, MN, a few weeks later.
Bismarck was considered one of the toughest towns in America in the 1870s. But, northern Dakota Territory was referred to as the Northwest back then, and much of its history never made it into the history of the Wild West. Bismarck’s most lawless era began in 1870, when hundreds of railroad workers began advancing the Northern Pacific from Duluth. As the workers moved west, so did those who entertained them and took their money, including prostitutes, gamblers, saloonkeepers and drug dealers. Collectively, they were called the “End of the Track Gang.”
When railroad construction stalled in Bismarck, these “people of bad character” settled in for the duration. Two spots became particularly dangerous – Whiskey Point, opposite the Missouri River from Fort Abraham Lincoln, and “bloody Fourth Street.”
Two of the gang’s worst were Dave Mullen and Jack O’Neil, former partners of Limpy Jack Clayton. In fact, Limpy got his nickname after Mullen shot him in the leg for testifying against him in Duluth. All three moved on to what was becoming Jamestown, and then Mullen and O’Neil split off and went to Bismarck to open a saloon.
No love was lost between the fort’s soldiers and the End of the Track Gang. Even though soldiers were Mullen and O’Neil’s bread and butter, Mullen said he never “missed a good opportunity to shoot or rob a soldier.”
One October night in 1873, a gambler named “Spotty” Whalen shot and killed a soldier out at Whiskey Point. The civilian authorities didn’t do anything about it, so a group of soldiers decided to take matters into their own hands. In what became known as the “Battle of Mullen’s Corner,” the soldiers tracked Whalen to Mullen and O’Neil’s saloon. Mullen answered their knock by opening the door and shooting a soldier named Dalton to death. The others returned fire and Mullen quickly passed into the next life.
In the winter of 1876-77 a man named Lawrence shot another soldier out at the Point, and the victim ended up dying of lockjaw. On the heels of that came the death of a 7th Cavalryman by a man named Edwards while the two of them were trying to clear out Edwards’ saloon at closing time.
It was in this same time period that Branigan killed Massengale in his saloon. Unfortunately for him, nobody was interested in the details. A Bismarck Tribune article later explained: “He was convicted because public sentiment demanded a sacrifice. No matter what evidence might have been brought in his favor to show that the killing was done in self defense, there was a disposition to convict in order to stop the shooting scrapes which were then common incidents at Bismarck.”
Branigan’s case marked the end of Bismarck’s most violent era. Gold was discovered in the Black Hills that year, and “end of the trackers” who came to Bismarck were now catching the stagecoach to Deadwood – the “next” toughest town in America.
Source: Frank Vyzralek, The Last Stand of the “End of the Track Gang”, A Peek at Justice on the Dakota Frontier, North Dakota Humanities Council, January-February 2000; Bismarck Tribune, June 23, 1882
Dakota Datebook written by Merry Helm
* Branigan can be found under these alternate spellings: Brannigan, Banigan and Bannigan