Hazen lies about ten miles east of Fernley, Nevada and 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 to the south, included hotels, saloons, brothels, churches and schools.
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 jail and hanged on February 28, 1905.
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 strung him up 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.
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 lynched.
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.
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 officials of the county said there would probably be no further inquiry and it looks like the matter has been dropped.
