The Lewis Mudge Story (Florence, WI)

CLEAN UP OF FLORENCE IN RIP-ROARING DAYS RECALLED BY PIONEERS An article from The Escanaba Daily Press, Sunday, September 2, 1934 Iron Mountain--The Regulators were marching out of the little town of Florence, Wis. Their errand was a serious one.

Scarcely a word was spoken as they plodded down a sandy road, a dozen masked men or more, heavily armed, and carrying faggots and cans of inflammable fluid. The Menominee iron range was ablaze with hatred. The conflicting elements were the plug-uglies, toughs and gamblers who controlled the territory and its politics, and reputable citizens who had vowed to end the reign of ribaldry with rifle and noose if other methods failed.

Tonight the Regulators--this was the name adopted by these Crusaders of the Upper Peninsula--were about to strike a decisive blow for law and order. Their objective, termed a "camp of death" by Chase S. Osborn, was a low, squat building at the outskirts of town where "Old Man" Mudge maintained a logged "palace" of vice. Mudge was an accomplished actor. He posed as a minister on annual trips to Ohio and Northern Indiana, enjoying the confidence of the ordained clergy. He wore a silk hat, white cotton gloves and a frock coat--even while behind his bar--and his bland, sanctimonious air gained him large donations for his "missionary work" in the iron county. The money went for new roulette wheels and thugs to terrorize his enemies. His presence in Florence, just over the Wisconsin line, necessitated that the storm break there. Before it was over bullets sped in several pitched battles, a sheriff and a prosecuting attorney engaged in a pistol duel on the main street and a mining official's son was kidnapped and presumably killed.

Apply the Torch The Regulators gathered in a solemn knot when they neared the Mudge establishment. They heard the howl of a gaunt timber wolf chained to the back door. Music, ribald laughter and the shouts of gamblers issued from a dance hall from which many a lumberjack and miner was reputed to have disappeared after receiving a drink from the "black bottle," containing a mixture of hooch and "knockout drops," and a permanent fixture in the bar. "Go easy now or they'll see us," advised the leader of the band. "It'll be daybreak in half an hour." The men, their ranks close, crept through the trees along the road. They paused to adjust their masks in the shadow of the big building which was constructed of logs

on the principle of a fort. While watchmen scanned the front door, they emptied their cans upon the logs and applied matches to the dripping kerosene. Flames Leap High Expecting a fusillade from the windows, the Regulators leaped away from the glare of the flames. Blended with screams and running footsteps were yelps from the wolf, tugging in terror at his chain. Heat drove back a bucket brigade organized within. Trunks, furniture and clothing pelted to the ground from windows; a group of lumberjacks struggled to remove a battered melodeon. Shuffling into the blinding light, "Old Man" Mudge, dressed in his clerical garb, sent curse after curse into the darkness. His daughter, Mina, said to have been a beauty shook her fist at the twinkling lights of Florence. But voices were lost in the increasing roar of the flames now climbing over the roof and thrusting its tongues into every cranny and crevice. With the Den Wiped Out To the Regulators, running over the hills, the roar was a welcome one. It was a challenge of civic virtue to organized crime, a threat of more violent measures to clean up the district. They chuckled and grinned beneath their masks, for they knew that one of the worst dens of iniquity on the range would soon be ashes and smoldering timbers.

Today a shallow depression at the edge of a swamp is all that remains of "Old Man" Mudge's establishment. The Regulators have died or gone elsewhere, but their deeds and high points of the war between right and wrong are remembered by their descendants and the citizens who gave them support. The most vivid historian of the struggle in Osborn, who was a young newspaper editor in Florence in the early eighties when the fight was at its hottest. In his book, "The Iron Hunter," he paints Mudge as the arch-villain of the Middle West who combined the guile of a Borgia with the brutality of Bill Sykes. "The Mudge Gang was organized over a territory including the region for 500 miles south of Lake Superior from Canada to Minnesota," he say. "Mudge was as much of a genius in some directions as he was a devil in others. Compared with him, Machiavellian was a saint...He tolerated no rivals. No sea pirate was more bloodthirsty or vengeful.

Secret Passages "The gang would run off witnesses when arrests occurred near the law and order line. If they could get rid of them in no other way, the witnesses were killed. Any man who showed an inclination to oppose the gang was either killed or murdered." Osborn described the headquarters as follows: "A big log camp with frame gables held a bar and dance hall and stalls on the first floor. On the second floor were rooms about the size of those in a Tokyo Yoshiwara. A third floor attic contained dungeons and two trap doors. In the cellar were dark cells and a secret passage, well timbered with cedar, leading to where the hill on the stockade was situated broke down into a dense swamp. Surrounded by a Wall.

"Surrounding this camp of death were sharp pointed palisades, ten feet high, of the kind used against Indians to enclose pioneer blockhouses. Two passages led through the stockade."

Mudge was a Michigan product Mudge was a Michigan product, according to Florence's old timers. Some say he came from Ishpeming, some from Benton Harbor. He left Florence in a cutter pulled by a team of spanking white horses, stopping for a drink at the saloon of Azara Robichaud before turning his back forever on "Whisky Alley," where the Regulators had lashed the undesirables with black-snake and whips as an argument to leave town. With a scarf concealing his venerable locks, he climbed into the cutter, pausing to mutter a sacrilegious blessing upon the community. Then with a string of oaths and a peal of eerie laughter he disappeared over the hills, leaving Mina to look after herself.

After a brief stay in central Wisconsin, Mudge went to Benton Harbor, still maintaining his clerical pose, and died there at the age of 70. "I don't think he was as bad as Osborn made out," said William Judge, former sheriff at Florence. "But his gang caused a lot of trouble. The Menominee iron range was the toughest spot in the Middle West in those days and the worst characters shifted their operations between here and Iron Mountain. When things became too hot in Michigan they jumped to Wisconsin and vice versa. "Mudge came from a good family and studied for the ministry in his youth, I believe. Anyhow, he knew all the hymns and prayers. He used to tell how he made congregations cry over the plight of the poor downtrodden miners and lumberjacks. With their amends ringing in his ears and their good money in his pocket he would hurry back to his bottle in a hotel.

An Early Racketeer "He could stack cards as expertly as any man I ever say, and pull aces out of his sleeves so rapidly it was impossible to detect him. He was also an accomplished violinist. There was no racket he didn't undertake. One of his favorites was the sale of a "bee sting preventive," composed of dish water and coloring put up in attractively labeled bottles. He sold it to farmers with the guarantee that if it were rubbed on the hands and face one could remove honey from a hive without unpleasantness. "Several men who took him at his word nearly died from the consequences. He worked these

dodges during the slack season, but never in this territory because everyone knew him too well." One of the most dastardly acts attributed to the gang was the kidnapping of Willie Dickinson, seven-year-old son of Capt. William E. Dickinson, superintendent of the Commonwealth mine, two miles out of Florence. Dickinson incurred the gang's displeasure by demanding that the owner of a gambling resort move the establishment from property owned by the mine. The owner refused. "Capt. Dickinson took matters into his own hands," Judge related. "He had a crew of men place skids under the place and roll it away. Shortly afterward his son disappeared while on his way to school in Florence. It was surmised at the time that someone had picked him up with a horse and rig, on the excuse of giving the boy a ride to town.

Never Recovered "The case was like the Lindbergh kidnapping in regard to the excitement it raised. Officers could find now clews. Capt.

Dickinson spent thousands of dollars on private detectives, hired spies to join the gang and learn its secrets, offered big rewards and directed a nation-wide search. But he learned nothing. It was supposed the boy was killed and thrown into an abandoned shaft. Pat McHugh, saloon keeper and former prize fighter, was Mudge's most notorious henchman. He was feared throughout the iron county as a bully. Though numerous charges were laid at his door he always managed to escape arrest. Because of his apparent immunity, it was charged by Osborn that Sheriff John Redmond and J.E. Macintosh, prosecuting attorney, were under Mudge's control.

Fought a Duel "Each blamed the other for failure to act in regard to McHugh." Judge said. "the quarrel became so bitter they agreed to duel at 50 paces. The prosecutor fired when a handkerchief was dropped but his bullet whistled wide of the mark. The sheriff's gun missed fire. Tossing aside the useless weapon, Redmond grappled with the prosecutor, who shot him in the lung during the tussle.

"The sheriff's friends obtained a rope and threatened to hand Macintosh but their temper cooled. Redmond died from the wound a short time later." Eventually the law caught up with McHugh. Deputies and crusading citizens chased him into a swamp, from which he sniped at them with a rifle while dodging from tree to tree. Bill Noyes, giant woodsman and brother of the two-gun sheriff who succeeded Redmond, soon had the drop on the bully who fell on his knees and begged for his life. Noyes spared him. "Shots cracked along "Whisky Alley almost every night." Judge added. "Life was mighty cheap. On one occasion a miner chased another man between two buildings after an argument in a saloon.

When the man hid behind a lumber pile the miner waited for him to come out. As a figure stepped from the shadows the miner, who had armed himself with a plank, swung with all his strength. The victim was a stranger. "The miner was tried for murder, of course, but the jury declared him innocent. It held the killing was accidental because the victim was the wrong man." Today Florence, with mining at an end and its forests leveled is a staid and dignified community.

Business places fill "Whisky Alley," where several soft drink establishments enjoy a brisk patronage. The town lockup seldom boasts an occupant. Citizens find adventure in watering gardens and mowing their lawns, and Sunday school children play ring-around-the-rosy and other picnic games on the site of the site of the notorious "camp of death."

--The Escanaba Daily Press, Sunday, September 2, 1934 -Lewis Croix Mudge