The Catoctin Outlaws and the Origins of Blue Blazes
Years before the Blue Blazes became part of Thurmont’s history due to the 1929 raid on the county’s largest moonshining operation, it made the newspapers for another raid, but this one was to capture wanted criminals.
In 1913, the Catoctin Clarion reported “a gang of this character has been in our midst for some time; walking around town, making purchases at our stores, talking freely to citizens, and making trips through the country at night relieving people of feed, poultry and other articles.”
The “outlaw gang” turned out to be two men, but “one of them known as a desperate character.”
They were camping on Catoctin Mountain in a heavily wooded area to the right of Blue Blazes and a mile from the old Harman Mill. “It is said that so dense was the growth of small trees that it was almost impossible to see the camp up until within a few feet of it,” the Clarion reported.
In nearly every local story, Blue Blazes refers to the massive still that county deputies raided in 1929. The still is said to have been named Blue Blazes after the color that moonshine burned when it was ready. The 1913 story does not involve a still, and it is before Prohibition. Blue Blazes was the name originally given to a section on Hunting Creek in the mid-1800s. As the story goes, a group of men was “gigging” in the creek using torches to see by since it was nighttime. One of the men slipped, and his torch fell into the water. The Clarion reported, “the party was terrified at finding that it had set on fire the entire surface of the stream as far up and down as they could see and that it burned with a Blue Blaze.”
In 1888, the Clarion asked its readers what could have caused the phenomenon. Some readers suggested it was burning coal oil from beneath Chimney Rock that leaked into the stream. One reader wrote that coal oil wouldn’t have burned that color. He suggested “the party might have broken its jug or decanted its keg of whiskey, which the torches ignited, and in their condition of exhilaration, the flames seemed more extended than they actually were.”
Whatever the scientific explanation was, the name stuck to that area, eventually spreading to include the area around that section of Hunting Creek.
Once the authorities located the camp near Blue Blazes, Thurmont Police conducted a joint raid with Waynesboro Police.
“Both men were there, but the fine big bay horse they had in their possession put them wise that some one was coming by neighing,” according to the Clarion.
The men in the camp ran for theirs as the officers rushed in. One man gave himself up. The other man got away.
The captured man was Sparon Gaugher, who, according to the Clarion, “It is claimed he has killed a number of men, and it is thought he and his companion are the ones who assaulted a man at the ‘Blue Goose’ saloon near Pen-Mar a short time ago.”
The other man was named John Toms and was wanted for escaping jail in Gettysburg for stealing chickens and other property.
The police found a stolen horse, buggy, feed, and new clothing at the campsite. The prisoner was taken to jail in Waynesboro.
Gaugher was convicted of horse stealing in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and given a prison term.
His companion turned out to be wanted in three Pennsylvania counties. He had served time in the state penitentiary for shooting a man at the Leland Hotel in Waynesboro.
