Harry Magnuson

What do you know about Johnny Harris’s supposed escape from the Murray courthouse? We are life-long residents of the Wallace area. My father had told me about that escape when I was … many years ago. It was apparently quite a notorious escape, the way he jumped out of the second-floor of the frame building in Murray, Idaho, which is the courthouse, which was standing until a few years ago, when it caved in with heavy snow. He escaped and apparently went to Canada. That’s about what I know.

 

Then you visited Sandon? We had a property up at Sandon. I used to go up there once a year to hold a shareholders meeting. There used to be a hotel in Sandon. This is in the early ‘50s. I forget the name of the lady we got acquainted with, the proprietor of the hotel. At that time Harris had been a long-time resident and he had from my understanding, advanced in age, and the story that I picked up while in Sandon on several trips was that he would never have his back on his door. He’d always sit in the little lobby of this hotel facing the door, which was kind of, I guess, self-protection. That’s about the extent of my knowledge of Johnny Harris.

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So did you meet him, or had he died by the time you first visited? As I recall, when I first went up there in the ‘50s, he was still around, and he came to that hotel — I don’t know whether he lived in the hotel, or he came there — but it was a hang-out for him. He would sit in the lobby and gaze out the front door.

 

How did you figure out he was the man your father had told you about? That’s a good question. I don’t know. We had some associates in Sandon and apparently they told me that was Johnny Harris. Really, I don’t know the answer to that.

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So you didn’t talk to him about his past, or he didn’t mention it? No, I didn’t have any personal conversation with him, or any recollection of it. We were sort of strangers, we came into town once a year and have a meeting, and go to the hotel. We stayed in New Denver most of the time. But we got acquainted with the proprietor of the — 

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Was her name Alma? Yeah, that rings a bell.

 

That was Johnny’s wife. That rings a bell. But boy, this goes back a long ways.

 

At least 50 years. Johnny Harris died in 1953 … What was the property you had there? We had the Silver Ridge. The Silver Ridge Mining Co., and we had a property in Sandon. One of our predecessors had been a mining man and wanted to develop this property. He died pretty suddenly. I took over the matters of the estate, and I found myself going to Sandon about once a year. We had this company, and had to hold a meeting in Canada once a year. So we went up to Sandon or New Denver to hold our meeting, and we did that for several years.

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How many shareholders did you have? It was a public company. We had a couple of thousand shareholders. It was broadly distributed.

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How many actually came to the meetings? Not very many. There was only two or three other than the officers. 

 

Did you hold the meetings in the hotel in Sandon? We held some in New Denver. I recall there was a hotel in New Denver. And then for many years we’d hold our meetings in Nelson. We had an accountant in Nelson that took care of the corporate records and he had an office … I think we actually held the meetings in the Hume Hotel. We’d stay there and we’d have one of those meeting rooms, and have our annual meeting there.

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How long were involved with that property? For a good many years. It never turned out very much. We maintained the property and sometime many years later, the Canadian markets got active, and some people got tired, and somebody in Vancouver took the company over. It was later merged into somebody else, and now it’s gone into oblivion. But we had it for a long time.

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Was it an actual working mine? It was a working prospect. We had a long underground tunnel that was designed to explore the geology of that area. That may be a method of doing it down in the Couer d’Alene mining district, but the ore deposits in and around Sandon and New Denver are different types. They’re more like a pod or pocket and so a long drift isn’t the best way to prospect.

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When was the last time you were in this area? It’s got to be 15 years. I drove up there on a holiday with my family. I think that’s the last time. By that time, the hotel was gone, and they’d had the floods, and there wasn’t much left of Sandon.

 

In Wallace, in the city, there’s a plat, they call it the Harris Addition. It was probably in the 1890s, when the town was getting settled. At one point they brought in a subdivision they called the Harris Addition.

 

Is it still called that today? It’s not referred to that, but I’ve seen legal documents that describe properties in Wallace.

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How long has your family been there? My grandparents came there in the 1890s, and we’ve been there any since.

 

So they may have known Johnny Harris. Maybe the story was passed down from them. They could have well known him. It’s a small town. My one grandfather, my father’s father, he ran a hotel and a couple of saloons. He could have well become acquainted. The other grandfather was an old country miner, and I don’t think he would have been acquainted with Johnny Harris. He was probably trying to make a living and raising his family.

 

Harry Magnuson obituary:

https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2009/jan/25/silver-valleys-magnuson-dead-85/

 

Harry Magnuson profile: 

https://cdapress.com/news/2023/jun/09/harry-f-magnuson-north-idahos-own/