It was nearly three months after the USA entered World War I (1917–1918) and understandably Americans were nervous about sending troops to fight in Europe. So, it probably sounded like the horrors of war had come home when in the early morning of June 29, 1917, Bolton Landing residents Charles Hier and William Tobin were suddenly awakened by two explosions from the post office.
What the startled Bolton Landing citizens heard was not an artillery barrage. Rather, they were witnesses to “Bolton Landing New York’s Great Post Office Robbery of 1917.”
Around 2 am on June 29, 1917, four daring burglars broke a window to gain entrance into the post office. The “yeggs,” as burglars were often called back then, used two explosions to open the post office safe. The safecrackers snatched $30 in cash and a modest amount of postage stamps.
On their escape, the thieves ran into Hier and Tobin, who had come out of their respective homes to investigate the noise. The duo confronted the four criminals in the street, but Hier and Tobin were ordered back to their dwellings or “suffer the consequences.” The two unarmed Bolton residents promptly ran for cover.
The crooks got into an automobile and headed south on the lake road toward the Village of Lake George. A telephone message was conveyed to Lake George Police Officer Wood as well as to Sheriff Baker and the Glens Falls police department. However, the thieves got away.
The nighttime robbery was bold, using explosives to blast open the post office safe, but it was somewhat unproductive. The $30 in cash taken by the culprits by today’s rate would equate to about $740, not a great collection for the robbery of a federal post office.
The Bolton Landing postmaster, William Norton, reported the thieves only took a small amount of postage stamps, overlooking a larger quantity.
So, why was there even a burglary of Bolton Landing’s post office in 1917?
During this era, bandits frequently targeted post offices. Unlike banks, post offices were unguarded, and their safes were not as theft-proof as those in larger banking establishments.
Nonetheless, the news of prowlers who used explosives to rob the post office, threatened two local citizens, and finally made their escape by automobile, was certainly a headline grabber.
“Bolton Landing’s Great Post Office Robbery of 1917” occurred around the time that “Canton Eddie” Collins, a St. Lawrence County, New York safecracker, was being blamed for many robberies around the northeast.
Furthermore, this was just a few years before the notorious Newton brothers, a gang of crooks from Texas, began holding up banks, stores, and post offices in the Midwest and South. During this era, heists like these were nearly as common as burglaries of banks, gas stations, and country stores.
Bolton Landing’s 1917 robbery is a reminder of best-selling author Michael Crichton’s 1975 novel, The Great Train Robbery. The book was based upon a daring train theft of gold in England in 1855. A movie about the novel was released in 1979 starring Sean Connery and Donald Sutherland.
A version of this article first appeared on the Lake George Mirror, America’s oldest resort paper, covering Lake George and its surrounding environs. You can subscribe to the Mirror HERE.
Illustrations, from above: The author’s interpretive drawing depicting the getaway of four safecrackers after robbing the Bolton Landing, New York post office safe in the early morning hours of June 29, 1917 (Joseph W. Zarzynski); and this seal of a rider-on-a-horse is reported to be based upon a drawing employed by Benjamin Franklin when he was appointed Postmaster General by the Continental Congress in 1775. The seal was in use by the postal service from 1837–1970 (United States Post Office Department).
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