Harry Tracy had escaped prison, survived gunfights, crossed Washington with posses behind him, and vanished into the Cascade Mountains. By August 1902, one of the most notorious outlaw manhunts in the history of the American West appeared to have lost its fugitive.
Then Harry Tracy surfaced again.
In Episode 8—the finale of the Harry Tracy Deep Dive—we follow the escaped Oregon State Penitentiary convict across the Cascades and into eastern Washington, where the final days of his extraordinary run began to unfold. His exact route through the mountains remains uncertain, but by late July Tracy had reached the country east of the Cascades and was once again moving among ranches, farms, and small communities while attempting to stay ahead of the law.
Near Creston, Washington, Tracy arrived at the Eddy ranch, where an encounter with George Goldfinch finally placed authorities back on his trail. Goldfinch carried word of the fugitive’s whereabouts, Sheriff Jerry Gardner was alerted, and a small posse began closing in.
On August 5, 1902, the hunt that had stretched hundreds of miles across the Pacific Northwest reached its final confrontation.
Tracy fled from the ranch with his Winchester and ammunition as armed men moved into position around him. Gunfire followed. Wounded multiple times—including a devastating shot to the leg—Tracy managed to reach the cover of a wheat field, where he attempted to stop the bleeding and remained hidden as darkness settled over the countryside.
But this time, there would be no disappearing into the timber.
Unable to escape and surrounded by men waiting for daylight, Harry Tracy faced the decision he had spent the entire manhunt trying to avoid: capture and a return to prison.
At approximately 10:30 that night, a single gunshot sounded from the wheat field.
By morning, the manhunt for Harry Tracy was over.
Episode 8 reconstructs Tracy’s mysterious journey across the Cascades, his arrival in eastern Washington, George Goldfinch’s role in exposing his location, the final shootout near Creston, Tracy’s last hours in the wheat field, the discovery of his body, and the extraordinary aftermath that followed the death of one of the most relentlessly pursued outlaws of the early twentieth-century American West.
From his first steps onto the outlaw trail to prison escapes, robberies, gunfights, hostages, David Merrill, the Battle of Bothell, and a manhunt that consumed the Pacific Northwest, this is where the story of Harry Tracy finally ends.
This is Episode 8—the finale of the complete Harry Tracy Deep Dive.

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