Hazen was named for William Babcock Hazen, who served under General Sherman in his "march to the sea." The town, established in 1903 to house laborers working on the Newlands Irrigation Project south of here, included hotels, saloons, brothels, churches and schools.

In 1905 the first train came through on the new routing to Tonopah. In 1906 the Southern Pacific Railroad built a large roundhouse here as well as a fine depot.

In 1908 Hazen was nearly destroyed by fire.

As a tough town, it had no peer in the state. Nevada's last lynching occurred in Hazen when "Red" Wood was taken from the wooden jail and hanged on February 28, 1905.

Nevada's last lynching full of American folklore
By SCOTT SONNER, Associated Press Writer

HAZEN, Nev. - Truth is a precious commodity in the trading of the tall tales that make up the folklore of the American West.

The stories of gunfights, angry mobs and hanging trees are more the stuff of Hollywood scripts than documented records of the taming of the frontier a century ago.

So it's of particular interest that historians are more or less in agreement that Wednesday will mark the 96th anniversary of the last lynching in Nevada.

William ''Red'' Wood claimed the dubious distinction in a state with a reputation for vigilante justice when a group of men busted him out of Hazen's wooden jail and hanged him from a telegraph pole along the railroad 40 miles east of Reno on Feb. 28, 1905.

''We probably should have some reverence for poor Red Wood, but he probably got what he deserved,'' said Phil Earl, the Nevada Historical Society's curator of history emeritus.

The Reno Evening Gazette's account of the hanging the next day described Wood as a ''notorious thug and all around bad man.''

Wood was a morphine addict and saloon owner who had been suspected of killing his partner in the business. He was caught in the act of a robbery outside the Hazen depot the night before he was strung up.

''The mob worked quietly and it was not until the sun lighted up the country that the people of this place discovered the stiffened body swinging at the end of a rope in the heart of the city,'' the Reno newspaper reported.

''Today the little town goes quietly about its business as if nothing had happened.''

As for the mob?

''Who composed it is a deep mystery as not a man can be found today who seems to know anything about its membership,'' the newspaper said.

''The officials of the county say there will probably be no further inquiry and it looks like the matter will be dropped.''

The story ran on the front page next to reports on the divorce trial of Col. W.F. (Buffalo Bill) Cody in North Platte, Neb., and his wife's denials that she ever tried to poison him.

The next day's dispatch came under a headline, ''Town of Hazen indifferent to its shame.''

''When people hear the word 'lynching' in the West they get the idea that a mob just all the sudden arose,'' Earl said.

''Usually, that was not the case. They were men who lived in a community - businessmen, educators, editors. They were not criminal types.

''But Nevada was a big place and there often wasn't any law enforcement. They would just decide, 'Enough is enough. The damn government won't do anything about it.' So they'd take the law into their own hands.''

The lynchings of the Old West were different than those of the South, where innocent blacks were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan and other organized bands of racists.

The vast majority of Western lynching victims were white - suspected killers, highway robbers and cattle rustlers. And while hangings did occur, the number of vigilante lynchings were exaggerated, historians say.

''It's part of the myth about the West - that it was just good sport to hang a man before breakfast,'' said Elmer Rusco, a history and political science professor emeritus from the University of Nevada-Reno.

Rusco agrees that Red Wood was Nevada's last lynching victim, as does Guy Rocha, Nevada's state archivist who has made a career out of debunking Western myths.

''No myth here,'' Rocha said. ''It's a well-known and well-documented story.''

The lynching is mentioned on a state historical marker amid the sage brush along U.S. Highway 50-A in what is left of Hazen, a general store, antique shop and junk yard.

''I don't think there's anybody left who saw it,'' said Bunnie Corkill, a researcher at the Churchill County Museum in Fallon.

She remembers a man who recently died who claimed to have been present.

''He was a boy, 5 years old, and his father was a freighter teamster. When he saw all the commotion, he pushed the little kid under the wagon so he wouldn't get hurt,'' she said.

The rusty-haired Wood was among the men who settled into work camps along the Truckee River at the turn of the century to dig a canal for the first major federal irrigation project in the West.

''Those camps attracted lots of kinds of laborers. ... and the only law enforcement in all of Churchill County was one constable,'' he said.

Workers routinely retired to the local saloons and sometimes knockout drugs were dropped into their drinks, he said.

''They would wander outside where somebody would accost them, beat them up and rob them.''

No one was killed the night of the Hazen robbery, but witnesses subdued Wood after they saw him and an accomplice attack two victims.

After the lynching, a boy retrieved the rope and cut it into 2-inch pieces to sell for souvenirs.

''But as the story goes, when he finished with the rope there were still people who wanted to buy souvenirs. So he got another rope and cut it up,'' said Earl, who once met an area resident who had a piece of the rope, real or replacement.

''Americans are enterprising people. It's the American way,'' he said.

The only real controversy still surrounding the lynching involves a 1905 photograph on file with the state historical society showing Wood's body hanging from a telegraph pole.

Some say by the time photographers arrived from Reno, Wood already had been buried on the outskirts of town.

Not to be deterred, the story goes, the locals dug him up and strung him up again to help send a message to villains to stay clear of Hazen.

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Hopes were high for prosperity of Hazen-Fallon rail line


By Phillip I. Earl
Nevada Historical Society

Although the Nevada Northern Railway in White Pine County is the last of the state's short lines, the 16-mile route operating between Hazen and Fallon is an important remnant of the railroad era that began in the first decade of this century.

Interest in a rail connection between Fallon and the Southern Pacific line to the west surfaced in 1903, and local ranchers and businessmen commissioned a preliminary survey between Massie and Fallon in April of that year. Promotional and planning meetings were held during the next year and $60,000 was pledged in May 1904. Southern Pacific officials were discussing an extension east from Hazen by that time and a group of Californians were promoting the construction of an electric interurban line.

Southern Pacific superintendent John Shaughnessy sent out survey crews in February and March of 1905, but grading and construction were delayed for another year pending completion of the Hazen cutoff to the south. The Nevada Legislature granted a right of way over public lands under state control in 1905, as did officials of the U.S. Reclamation Service. Much of the right of way was already under Southern Pacific control and State Sen. W.W. Williams of Fallon donated a 10-acre tract for a Fallon depot in June 1905.

A real estate boom had meanwhile gotten under way. A.A. Hibbard, a Reno broker, predicted that Lohontan Valley would be a "a second Sacramento Valley" within two years. Fifty to 75 10-horse teams were operating between Hazen and Fallon by midsummer 1905, and there was every prospect that a railroad would be a financial success from the outset. Hazen had become a railhead for traffic to the mining camps of central Nevada via the Hazen cutoff and the former Carson & Colorado was also prospering.

Construction began in August 1906 and the first train rolled into Fallon five months later, Jan. 10, 1907. There had been talk of celebrating "Railroad Day" upon completion of the line, but several dates came and went and the Hazen-Fallon line was never officially christened. Both Fallon and Hazen were plagued with crime during the construction phase, but life returned to normal within weeks of completion. Southern Pacific officials were promoting Lahontan Valley and Fallon's businessmen were doing their part to ensure their future prosperity, organizing the community's first Chamber of Commerce on Oct. 1, 1906.

Passenger service began within a month and was coordinated with the Southern Pacific schedule from Hazen to Reno. There was talk of extending the line on east to mining operations at Sand Springs and to the camps of Fairview, Wonder and Rawhide, but the economics of such a proposition did not justify the expense and the line ended in Fallon. A gasoline motorcar service between Reno and Fallon was established in March 1911, but subsequent competition with buses and private automobiles forced a cutback to a single run a day in September 1920. In May 1924, with only one or two passengers a day taking the trip, the service ended.

By the early 1920s, the Lincoln Highway had been improved to the point that motor trucks were impacting freight service and the line had begun to go into the red by the late 1920s. It remained in operation only because the citizens of Fallon and Lahontan Valley protested when company officials applied to the Nevada Public Service Commission for abandonment. This situation continues today. Southern Pacific officials, mining companies, naval authorities and Fallon shippers have never been able to work out a plan to make proper use of the line. A nominal once-a-week service is maintained by law and the future is up in the air.

Phillip I. Earl is curator of history for the Nevada Historical Society.