While rummaging through internet sites, old newspapers, interviews, books, photos, and personal paper collections to come up with material for these Then & Now articles, I often come across fascinating bits of information. By themselves, they do not provide enough information to write an article about, but nevertheless they are interesting bits of history pertaining to Alva and the surrounding area.
Early Builder
Take for instance a front page article from the Alva Review Courier dated Sunday, May 2, 1937. The article is reporting the death of one William H. Wiggins, of Long Beach, CA. Lauding him as Alva’s foremost building contractor in its early days, it reports that Wiggins was first sent in to the Cherokee Strip to construct the land office prior to the Run. I have also read that this office was constructed in Kansas and railed in on the Santa Fe, so perhaps Mr. Wiggins was the man who helped build it there and then banged it all together in Alva.
No matter, as his accomplishments went far beyond that. Returning to Alva and making the Run, he staked a claim 4.5 miles west of Alva and also got one on the town square. While engaged in business in Alva, he constructed the city hall, the Methodist Episcopal Church and parsonage, the “New” Opera House (Liberty Theatre), the Bert Beegle home, the George Crowell home, the old Alva State Bank (Sutter Law Office) and the Kavanaugh and Shea building just south of it (La DEE Da‘s), the Louis Miller building (once the Double O Grocery) and numerous private dwellings within the city.
Described as one of Alva’s most active boosters when the city was rapidly growing, he spent the last 18 years of his life in Long Beach. The Peoria, IL native left quite a legacy in old Alva town.
First AHS Football Season?
Kirk also obtained some information from Dr. Bruce Meyer in regard to a very early Alva High School football season. Occurring in the fall of 1917, it is so early that no team mascot name is mentioned. “Goldbugs” came several years later.
In the record reported by Brough Tanner, Alva lost just one game (to Cherokee 2nd High - whatever that means) and fought to a 0-0 tie with Medicine Lodge. Along the way they beat Cornell State Agricultural College (which has since become the correctional facility in Helena), Harper, KS High, Anthony, KS High, Cherokee High, Jet High, Watonga High and Woodward High. They outscored their opponents 104 - 48.
I have a copy of Alva High’s abbreviated 1942 Annual in which the 1941 team was undefeated and untied (the little booklet fails to mention the number of games or the opponents played). That annual mentions that this was the first perfect season in Alva’s 25-year history, which would make the 1917 team likely the first ever at Alva High. The ‘43 coach was Dean Simon. There were no state playoffs then, so the ’41 squad is still the only unbeaten, untied team in Alva’s history.
Alva did have a perfect season in the mid-’30s, but were beaten by Watonga. The Eagles had to forfeit the game, however, when it was discovered that their fullback was too old for eligibility.
The Old Ticket Booth
Another little tidbit for today involves the old ticket booth at the south edge of the Northwestern campus. The last vestige of the Ranger baseball diamond and Newby Field gridiron, it still sits just to the right of the entrance to the parking lot in front of Coronado Hall. I never knew the age of that little building, as it was already in place in my earliest recollections of the area.
An October 3, 1933 issue of the Alva Review Courier, however, gives us a close proximity of its age. The issue contains a small front-page article stating that “Near the football field carpenters busily build a brick ticket booth. No longer shall those unrecognized heroes suffer from cold in order to serve the sport fans of Northwestern.”
So we can surmise that the booth was completed sometime around early to mid-October of 1933.
Violent Murder
Sometimes a piece of information is so distasteful that I can’t bring myself to write about it even though there is considerable information. Alva Fire Chief Kirk Trekell has been researching Alva’s “fire history,” so to speak, and in the process has furnished the writer with considerable information.
Beginning with the Monday, March 5, 1917 issue of the Courier, he found acres of information on what is probably the most violent crime ever committed in Alva, which took place approximately in the building recently vacated by Happiness House. That building was not standing yet, as there was then a row of about three wooden buildings that housed a few businesses just to the north of the old Monfort Drug Store (the Extreme occupies the Monfort site today). The building of import here was then called the Antlers Café.
The gist of the matter is that a young man recently arrived from Illinois was working in the Antlers Cafe, and as part of his keep he slept there at night in order to keep an eye on things. He and his ‘friend’ had been involved in a game of craps during the day and the friend had lost rather heavily, The friend returned during the night, robbed the cash register, and beat the young man from Illinois to death, spattering blood everywhere.
That’s all I’ll mention about the crime. The perpetrator was quickly apprehended, readily confessed and was sentenced to life imprisonment at McAlester in a matter of days. Justice was swift back then.
A brother and uncle came from Illinois to escort the body home, and the people of Alva got up a fund to contribute a very nice floral spray for his burial services. The killer’s “haul?” $16.75.
Strangely enough, the building in which the murder took place burned the next year, along with the other wooden buildings adjacent to it. It even caused some damage in the brick Monfort Building, which would suffer its fiery fate in the early fifties. A photo (again belonging to Dr. Meyer) of the burned Antlers café and adjacent buildings accompanies today’s article.
