Numerous springs in the Intermountain West are named for wranglers and itinerant sheepman. Laird Springs is one, that has an interesting story, and one of which is still an unsolved murder.

Edward Laird was born in 1862, the eldest of three children, his two siblings Margaret born 1863, and brother Warren in 1864. They were  orphaned at an early age and raised in an orphanage in Carson City, Nevada. As young men, Ed and Warren went to work on various ranches in Northeastern California. By the late 1890s, they had settled in the North Warner Valley, Lake County, Oregon. Warren would remain in Lake County for the rest of his life.

In the early 1900s, Edward Laird worked as a ranch hand at Round Hole, Smoke Creek Desert, also known as Bonham Ranch. The owners William and Martha Bonham Ross, were in-laws to Laird’s sister, Margaret Sutcliffe.

Very little is known of Laird’s activities on the Smoke Creek Desert. Sometime after 1910, Laird filed a “squatter’s claim” to eighty acres, three miles north of Round Hole. There was a spring on the claim where he built a cabin. Edward Laird was murdered on or about August 20, 1917. Details of his murder are sketchy. According to newspaper reports, his body was marked with two shot gun wounds and he was found dead in his cabin. On August 29, 1917 the Nevada State Journal had a caption, “Revenge Believed to Have Been the Cause of Killing With Shotgun near Round Hole.”  However, the newspaper did not provide any details. A week later area ranchers offered a $500 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the party who murdered Laird. That was basically the end of the case. Cook Laird, Warren’s grandson, told me that Edward was a red head who was known to be hot headed with a mean temper.

Edward Laird was buried 100 yards east of where the spring bears his name.

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Note: In 2004, Laird Spring was included in a BLM tour.