Where four American Legion veterans were killed and IWW member Wesley Everest was lynched on Armistice Day 1919 — the contested 1924 bronze and a 2024 IWW plaque now share the park.
110 S Silver St, Centralia, WA 98531
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Public park, no admission charge.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Flat public park with paved paths. The Sentinel statue and IWW plaque are at street level.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1924 · The Sentinel statue listed on the National Register of Historic Places (December 17, 1991) · Site of the 1919 Centralia Massacre, a pivotal event in American labor history · Wesley Everest lynching: one of the documented racial mob killings in Washington State history
The Centralia Massacre unfolded on November 11, 1919, the first Armistice Day following the end of World War I. Centralia's American Legion post marched in a downtown parade; the local IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) hall had been raided and shut down in other Pacific Northwest cities since 1917, and Centralia IWW members anticipated an attack on their hall that day. Their attorney had advised that they had the legal right to defend their property.
Shots were fired during or immediately after the parade passed the IWW hall at Second and Tower Streets. American Legion members Warren Grimm, Ben Casagranda, and Arthur McElfresh were killed in the initial exchange; John Watt died of wounds shortly after. The exact sequence of who fired first remains disputed by labor and Legion historians to this day.
That night, a mob removed Wesley Everest—an IWW member who was also a decorated World War I veteran—from the city jail. Everest was driven to a bridge over the Chehalis River and lynched. His death was ruled a suicide by local authorities. No one was ever charged with his murder.
Eleven IWW members were tried for the deaths of the Legionnaires; seven were convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 25–40 years each. Most were paroled by the late 1930s.
The Sentinel, a ten-foot bronze statue by Seattle sculptor Alonzo Victor Lewis, was dedicated in George Washington Park on November 11, 1924, as a memorial to the four Legion dead. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 17, 1991. After decades of IWW advocacy, a second memorial plaque honoring the union victims—with Everest's name followed by the word 'lynched'—was installed in George Washington Park in 2024.
Sources
The Centralia Massacre site does not carry a commercial ghost tour narrative; what it carries instead is unresolved historical violence that neither side has fully acknowledged for over a century. The two memorials now sharing George Washington Park make that tension legible to any visitor who reads both inscriptions.
The 1924 Sentinel commemorates Warren Grimm, Ben Casagranda, Arthur McElfresh, and John Watt as fallen defenders of American values. The 2024 IWW plaque, installed after decades of advocacy including requests to then-Governor Jay Inslee for posthumous pardons, names the union members imprisoned and Wesley Everest—the World War I veteran who was dragged from jail by a mob and hanged from the Chehalis River bridge—as 'lynched.'
HistoryLink, the Washington State digital encyclopedia, documents the event in detail and notes that the sequence of shots on November 11, 1919 remains genuinely disputed in the historical record. The NW Labor Press has covered anniversary commemorations that draw both labor advocates and Legion descendants, often in the same space.
The Lewis County Historical Museum, located nearby, holds primary source materials on the massacre including photographs and trial records.
Notable Entities
View The Sentinel (1924, National Register of Historic Places), a bronze memorial to four American Legion members killed on November 11, 1919, and the 2024 IWW plaque commemorating the union victims including lynched veteran Wesley Everest. Interpretive context available through Lewis County Historical Museum nearby.
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