Bullets zipped by him like a thunderstorm gone frenetic, whistling past his ears and slamming into the crumbling walls overhead. Minutes earlier the young Hispanic had bolted across the plaza to hole up in the tiny wood-and-adobe jacal—meager refuge from the coming hail of lead. Over the next 36 hours more than 4,000 rounds of ammunition would riddle the structure, tearing away parts of the house. Eight slugs were later pried from a broom handle.

Yet through it all the teen survived unscathed.

In late October 1884, in a dramatic display of skill, spunk and luck, unimposing 5-foot-7 19-year-old Elfego Baca instigated and prevailed in what was likely the most unequal civilian gunfight in the history of the American West. Certainly, it was the most unusual ever recorded.

Elfego’s Early Life

Many legends surround Elfego Baca, but a few facts are certain. On Feb. 27, 1865, he was born in Socorro, New Mexico Territory, to Francisco and Juana María Baca. The first legend has it his mother was playing las Iglesias, the Mexican version of softball, when her son emerged into the world right there on the field. Another legend claims Elfego was kidnapped in early childhood by Indians who immediately returned the toddler to his family after his screaming disturbed the serenity of the abductors’ camp.

A year after Baca’s birth his parents relocated the family to Topeka, Kan. There, surrounded by Anglos, Elfego grew up learning English and how to defend himself—using his wits before resorting to fists or gunplay, but never backing down. 

Then, in early 1872 an unrecorded illness struck the family, claiming the lives of Baca’s mother, two sisters and a brother. Deciding to return to New Mexico Territory, Elfego’s father, Francisco, brought along eldest son Abdenago but left Elfego in the care of an orphanage. Settling in the small town of Belen, in Valencia County some 40 miles north of Socorro, the senior Baca was soon appointed marshal.

In 1880 15-year-old Elfego left the orphanage and made his way to Socorro, some 75 miles south of Albuquerque. There he reunited with brother Abdenago and other members of the Baca clan, later reconnecting with father Francisco. But it was to be a brief reunion for Elfego and his father. That December in the line of duty Marshal Baca shot into the midst of a drunken brawl in Belen, killing a man. Tried for murder the following spring, he was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. Francisco was being held in the Valencia County Jail, in Los Lunas, awaiting transfer to the Kansas State Penitentiary, in Lansing, when he and three other prisoners were “liberated” by Elfego and 15-year-old accomplice identified only as Chavez.

Newspapers reported details of the jailbreak, but only a few people knew of Elfego’s involvement. After escorting his father to El Paso, Texas, where Francisco could slip across the international border should need arise, Elfego returned to New Mexico Territory. Young Baca worked on his uncle’s isolated Socorro cattle ranch and then for a time in the Albuquerque area, where he transported meat by wagon to Santa Fe Railroad workers. But he always returned home to Socorro.

“Not Afraid”

From the 1880s into the ’90s Socorro was besieged by more than 3,000 miners without benefit of much law enforcement. Sheriffs were stretched thin, thus the town ran wide open 24 hours a day. One day in January 1883 liquored-up Texas cowboys staggered out of a Socorro saloon and rode through the Hispanic neighborhoods in a cloud of dust and bullets. County Sheriff Pete Simpson was in pursuit when he happened across Baca. Mounted and armed, Elfego, weeks shy of his 18th birthday, joined the chase at Simpson’s request. In an interview years later Baca claimed to have shot one of the fleeing horsemen from the saddle at better than 300 yards. Newspapers at the time reported that Simpson had made the shot, but Elfego remained cocky about the encounter. When asked if he knew the name of the dead cowboy, he replied flippantly, “He wasn’t able to tell me by the time I caught up with him.”

Though still wild and reckless in many respects, Elfego took a desk job at age 19 as a mercantile clerk for onetime Socorro judge and mayor Juan José Baca (not a relative), where the teen’s ability to speak both Spanish and English served him well. Though hardly as exciting as being a posse member, it beat being punching cows. Still, Elfego harbored ambitions of being a lawman.

In October 1884 Pedro Sarracino, a county sheriff and saloon owner from San Francisco Plaza, aka Frisco (present-day Reserve, N.M.), rode to Socorro to visit storeowner Baca, his brother-in-law. While there Sarracino mentioned to Elfego that several cattle ranches had sprung up in the Frisco area, and that their hands, mostly rowdy Texans, were running roughshod over local Hispanics. The chaos had recently come to a head when cowboys tortured and maimed a local man in Sarracino’s cantina. Outraged and full of teenage braggadocio, an outraged Elfego declared, “I will show the Texans there is at least one Mexican in the county who is not afraid of an American cowboy.” According to a 1924 autobiographical pamphlet, Baca volunteered on the spot to be Sarracino’s deputy. “I told him that if he would take me back to Frisco with him, that I would make myself a self-made deputy.” Elfego later claimed to have made his own badge. With that, the pair headed to Frisco, 110 miles west as the crow flies in far west-central New Mexico Territory. 

The Legendary Fight

For two centuries before Anglo miners and trappers explored the region that today comprises western New Mexico and eastern Arizona the land supported several hundred Hispanic families. Farming, fishing and hunting kept the people well fed. Long before that, of course, the region had supported various sedentary Indian tribes.

In the 1880s cattlemen arrived from Texas and Oklahoma, daily swelling the population of sprawling San Francisco Plaza, a string of three settlements along the namesake river, which by 1884 had become a staging ground for cross-cultural sparring. Anglos sparred with Hispanics who sparred with Indians, and around it went. Adding fuel to the flames were heated arguments between the various cattle outfits—men who “rode for the brand” and took offense when someone from a competing ranch made an offhand comment. On the heels of the influx of rash young men more than a dozen saloons and bordellos sprang up in Middle and Lower Frisco. The valley was rife with tension.

Soon after Sarracino and young Baca arrived in town, Elfego stepped forward to make his first official arrest. On Oct. 29, 1884, inside the popular Milligan’s Whiskey Bar, drunken cowboy Charlie McCarty brandished his pistol at Hispanic patrons, ordering them to dance, then shot off Baca’s hat. Standing his ground, Baca flashed his badge at McCarty, who hailed from the John Bunyan Slaughter ranch, a notoriously rough Socorro County outfit. Somehow Elfego managed to take the man’s gun. 

Cowboys gathered outside were unhappy to hear that this swaggering, self-deputized Hispanic hero had snagged their partner. Liquored up and ready to fight, the Slaughter cowboys leveled their Winchesters at the saloon, cocked at the ready. As angry shouts, curses and threats from the street resounded off the interior walls, Baca barricaded the saloon doors and windows.

The leader of the mob, Slaughter ranch foreman Young Parham, demanded McCarty’s release even while testing the doors and windows with his shoulders. Parham vowed he and his men would take their friend by force if necessary. Elfego hollered back from inside, threatening to shoot if the cowboys weren’t “out of there by the count of three.” The story goes that the ranch hands had begun to crack jokes about Elfego’s race being unable to count, when they heard him call out in a single quick breath, “One-two-three!” Baca and his “deputies”—friends who’d joined him inside—then fired several warning shots through the door.

In the resulting fusillade Parham had his horse shot out from under him, and as it collapsed, the horse crushed and killed him. Another cowboy caught a bullet through his knee. Out of ammunition and focused on caring for Parham, his horse and the wounded man, the ranch hands retreated, swearing vengeance against Baca and his deputies, who remained holed up at Milligan’s. Early the next morning Slaughter’s hands offered a compromise, vowing to leave be those inside the saloon if Baca would allow McCarty to be tried at a neighboring house. Elfego warily agreed and strolled next door with his ward.

At the speedy trial the justice of the peace fined the sobered-up McCarty $5 and ordered his release. By then, however, rumors had spread among the hands on surrounding ranches that Hispanics in Frisco had gone on a murderous rampage, killing and dismembering Anglo citizens. Seeking to mollify the gathering mob, the justice moved to detain Baca for questioning in Parham’s death.

Unwilling to be arrested, mobbed and undoubtedly lynched, Baca slipped out the “courtroom’s” side door and dashed across the plaza to a crude little jacal whose walls of mesquite sticks and dried mud would almost certainly not stop bullets. Evicting owner Geronimo Armijo and family, Elfego settled in for a siege. While much of the populace fled into the overlooking hills to watch the unfolding drama, some 80 vengeance-seeking ranch hands, using the adobe buttresses of a local church as cover, emptied their weapons into the jacal, reloaded and kept firing until its walls were full of holes. 

Incredibly, none of the bullets struck Baca. All attempts to dislodge the teen were unsuccessful. He refused to come out. In frustration Burt Hearne, of the Spur outfit, rode up to the jacal, leapt from his horse and tried to force the door. Immediately, shots from inside struck Hearne in the stomach. He died within moments. The cowboy soon had company. In the long gunplay four of the vigilantes were killed, eight wounded. Late that evening someone lit a stick of dynamite and tossed it at the jacal. The resulting explosion collapsed the roof and one wall. To spectators and Baca’s attackers alike it seemed no one could have survived the blast. But none of the cowboys was willing to investigate in the darkness. They wisely decided to wait and sift the ruins soberly in the light of day. 

As the morning sun peaked over the Mogollon Rim, the hands who’d spent the night sleeping on the cold ground around Baca’s hideout awoke to the aroma of steeping coffee and fresh tortillas—from inside the jacal. After a hearty breakfast the very much alive Baca resumed his watch. One hungry and enraged cowboy charged forward using a cast-iron shield pirated from a cookstove, only to flee and drop the armor after a slug creased his hairline.

At 6 that evening, a day and a half after the first shots were fired, the battle ended when a bona fide Socorro County deputy sheriff, Frank Rose, persuaded Baca to surrender. Before doing so, Elfego insisted on two conditions: to stand trial in Socorro, and to retain his two pistols (one was McCarty’s). The next morning he rode in the back of a buckboard on the return trip to his hometown. Trailing cowboys were warned not to approach.

Back in Frisco curious onlookers pored over the jacal. Inside, they were astonished to find an intact plaster statue of Nuestra Señora Doña Ana. That Baca had survived was also considered a miracle—until his secret was revealed. The jacal’s floor was recessed 18 inches belowground, enough to have screened Elfego from the incoming barrage. 

Yet Baca did seem to lead a charmed life, for an ambush planned for him on the road to Socorro also failed. Two separate groups of would-be assassins each mistakenly thought the other had carried out the attack. Meanwhile, the lawman arrived safely in custody in Socorro.

Charged with murder in the shooting of Hearne, Baca remained in jail until his trial in Albuquerque in May 1885. Among the items entered into evidence was the door of the jacal, bearing nearly 400 bullet holes. That and Sarracino’s testimony convinced the jury Elfego had indeed killed in self-defense. Subsequently tried and acquitted of murder in the death of Parham, Baca was immediately thrust into the status of folk hero to the local Hispanics.

A Colorful Career

Exploiting his notoriety from the Frisco shootout, Baca officially resumed his career as a deputy sheriff in Socorro. He was later elected county sheriff, with the power to secure indictments for the arrest of local lawbreakers. Instead of having his deputies risk life and limb in pursuit of the wanted men, he sent each of the accused a letter: 

“I have a warrant here for your arrest. Please come in by [fill in date] and give yourself up. If you don’t, I’ll know you intend to resist arrest, and I will feel justified in shooting you on sight when I come after you.”

Most fugitives turned themselves in.

Shortly after his acquittal in 1885 Baca married 16-year-old Francisquita Pohmer. Despite alleged dalliances by Elfego, the couple remained together 60 years and raised two sons and four daughters. 

In 1888 Baca was appointed a U.S. marshal and served two years. He then studied law and in 1894 was admitted to the bar. After working for respected jurist Alfred Alexander Freeman’s law firm in Socorro in 1895, Elfego operated his own practice on San Antonio Street in El Paso from 1902 to ’04.

Around 1910 he moved to Albuquerque, where he worked as both a lawyer and private detective. “Dressed in a flowing cape and trailed by a bodyguard, he stalked the downtown streets handing out business cards,” historian Marc Simmons writes. On the front of the card was printed Elfego Baca, Attorney-at-Law, Fees Moderate, on the reverse Private Detective, Divorce Investigations Our Specialty, Discreet Shadowing Done. As if being a private detective wasn’t exciting enough, Baca also worked a stint as a bouncer in a gambling house south of the border in Juárez, Chihuahua.

That period of his life spawned another legend. One day Baca received a telegram from a client in El Paso. “Need you at once,” it read. “Have just been charged with murder.” Attorney Baca supposedly responded with a tongue-in-cheek telegram reading, “Leaving at once with three eyewitnesses.”

When New Mexico achieved statehood in 1912, Baca ran for Congress as a Republican. Though unsuccessful, he remained a valued political figure for his ability to turn out the Hispanic vote. He held several other public offices in succession, including Socorro County clerk, Socorro County school superintendent, mayor of Socorro, and district attorney for Socorro and Sierra counties. “Most reports say he was the best peace officer Socorro ever had,” Leon Metz writes of Baca in his 1996 book The Shooters.

Still more adventures, with revolutionary overtones, awaited Elfego.

Another Escape

In February 1913, after a period of unremitting turmoil amid the Mexican Revolution, President Victoriano Huerta wrested control of the republic, though he continued to face challenges from guerrilla leaders in the northern provinces. Chief among them was Francisco “Pancho” Villa, who controlled much of the state of Chihuahua, bordering New Mexico.

In early January 1914, hotly pursued by Villa’s army, Huerta-allied General José Inés Salazar crossed into Presidio, Texas. Almost at once he was arrested and charged with having violated American neutrality laws. Placed in military custody at Fort Bliss, outside El Paso, the general was later moved to Fort Wingate, near Gallup, New Mexico Territory.

President Huerta in particular wanted Salazar out of jail, and agents of the Mexican government sought the legal services of Baca, whose reputation had spread across the border. Baca traveled to Washington but failed to gain the general’s release. He then engaged in a series of legal shenanigans that garnered his client an additional perjury charge. On November 16 Salazar was transferred to the Bernalillo County Jail, in Baca’s hometown of Albuquerque, to face the charge. Four days later two masked men entered the jail, overpowered and bound the sheriff and sped off in a car with Salazar. He was last spotted in El Paso, headed south.

Word about town had it Huerta’s accomplices had arrived in Albuquerque beforehand and quietly contacted certain influential residents, providing them with substantial funds to arrange Salazar’s freedom. Some suspected Baca had been the ringleader. Yet Elfego had an ironclad alibi for his whereabouts on the night of the escape; he’d been drinking at the crowded Graham Bar in downtown Albuquerque and had even overtly asked a friend for the exact time so he could set his watch.

Regardless, in April 1915 a federal grand jury handed down indictments charging Baca and three other officials with conspiracy in Salazar’s escape. At their December trial all four were acquitted. Elfego’s reputation only soared among Hispanic admirers.

On Feb. 26, 1940, the day before Baca’s 75th birthday, he boasted to The Albuquerque Tribune that of the 30 people he had defended on charges of murder, only one was sent to the penitentiary. In later years Baca worked closely with longtime New Mexico Senator Bronson M. Cutting as a political investigator and wrote a weekly newspaper column in Spanish praising the senator’s work on behalf of local Hispanics. He even switched parties with Cutting in support of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1944, despite poor health, 79-year-old Baca considered running for governor, but that year he failed even to secure the Democratic Party’s nomination for district attorney. 

“I Made ’em Believe it”

For more than six decades Baca remained a lively part of New Mexico’s cultural landscape, relating spirited memories of comely señoritas and political intrigues past. His miraculous deliverance from the 1884 Frisco shootout had earned this man of many facets a reputation as one tough hombre. That reputation followed him throughout his years as a lawman, criminal lawyer, district attorney, private detective, chief bouncer of a Prohibition gambling house and American agent for President Huerta.

On July 13, 1936, Janet Smith of the Federal Writers’ Project, part of the Roosevelt-era Works Progress Administration, conducted an interview with Baca, the notes from which are preserved in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. “I never wanted to kill anybody,” Baca told Smith, “but if a man had it in his mind to kill me, I made it my business to get him first.” Full of self-confidence throughout his life, Baca added, “In those days I was a self-made deputy. I had a badge I made for myself, and if they didn’t believe I was a deputy, they’d better believe it, because I made ’em believe it.” 

As befitting a legend, New Mexico lawman Elfego Baca, who’d been born near the close of the Civil War in 1865, died at age 80 on Aug. 27, 1945, near the close of World War II. He is buried at Sunset Memorial Park in Albuquerque. 

this article first appeared in wild west magazine

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For further reading on this topic author Melody Groves recommends Memoirs: Episodes in New Mexico History, 1892–1969, by William A. Keleher; Incredible Elfego Baca: Good Man, Bad Man of the Old West, by Howard Bryan; and The Lost Frontier, by Rod Miller.

Who says living in the past doesn’t pay? Doug Hansen has turned a youthful passion for old-world craftsmanship into an internationally renowned business still rooted on family land in Letcher, S.D. Hansen Wheel & Wagon Shop has restored and built wagons and stagecoaches for museums, theme parks, film and TV productions, collectors, reenactors and people who just plain like to travel by wagon. Working in new and old buildings—the shop’s finishing area is in a former railroad depot—the Hansen team has built wagons and camp gear for such popular productions as Dances With Wolves and 1883, as well as the forthcoming Kevin Costner film Horizons. Hansen has also worked on stagecoaches and wagons for Wells Fargo, Disney, Knotts Berry Farm and Budweiser’s signature Clydesdales. Word has certainly gotten out, as the shop’s history-minded customers include clients in France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Japan and Taiwan—anywhere people celebrate the heritage of fine craftsmanship. 

What inspired you to work on wagons? 

My family gets a lot of credit, because my dad had a nice shop, my mom had a leather shop, and we had horses. My mother is a saddlemaker. My grandfather was a teamster and had worked in his uncle’s blacksmith shop. I was intrigued with old-world craftsmanship as a kid. A wheel needed restoration, so I undertook that. Pretty soon my mother was buying buggies at antique auctions, and I restored them. All of a sudden my hobby got out of control, and I made it a business. We are building those vehicles I’m passionate about. 

Would you rather restore/rebuild or start from scratch? 

When doing restoration, you’re usually just cleaning up, profiling. But in a replication, you have to build everything, and there are specific hardwoods for different components. A spoke is hickory. A felloe [rim] is white oak. The hub is elm. A reach [bearing shaft] is hickory. All your panel wood is yellow poplar. One of the challenges is finding the stock. In today’s hardwood industry most stock is used for kitchen cabinets and furniture. It’s thinner stock. The wagon industry no longer exists, so the heavy stock and specific species are harder to find. We often find we have to custom saw and custom dry, and it’s a long-drawn-out process.

Building a replica is a lot like being a sculptor. You have to rely on your eye and your hand to recreate that. You are sculpting a horse-drawn vehicle, be it a buckboard or a stagecoach. You are sculpting thousands of components. That historical accuracy of the horse-drawn era is form over function. They have to look good. They have to work. 

What type of vehicle do you most like to restore?

The stagecoach is my passion. It is the most complex. The leather thoroughbraces, the pumpkin-shaped vehicle—it is a complex vehicle of industry and artistry. My aptitude is the mechanical, the engineering, and then the artsy side of it. I can easily comprehend the engineering, and I appreciate the design. Like any historical trade, it takes a certain amount of time to understand. You have to get it right historically. It’s not your design; you are replicating a period.  

How do you define your role?

I’m the visionary. I carry chalk in my pocket, and I draw pictures on the ground or a bench, then work with the actual sculptor, the craftsman. 

How do you find or train employees?

It’s not our equipment that builds wagons—we don’t have cookie cutters. It’s our craftsmen, their dedication, skill and passion. All of them have aptitude. Nobody comes aboard as a wainwright or a wheelwright. We bring them on, train them, immerse them in our world. We work as a team—wheelwright, wainwright, blacksmith, coach maker, painter, trimmer and ornamentor. We take wood, iron, pigments, textiles and leather, and poof! you have a vehicle. One day you roll it out, critique it and say, “What can we do better next time?” We strive to be as proficient as the men back in the 1800s. They had all the knowledge. We’re still uncovering lost knowledge. We will never fully understand the process. 

What historical insights have you gleaned?

There’s a difference between a historian who lives it and one who writes it. I can read about a vehicle, I can look at it, but I don’t understand it as much as when I build it and drive it. 

How do you differ from period Old West craftsmen? 

They were forward engineering to meet a need. We are reverse engineering. What we do is a little bit like archaeology. We need to uncover tidbits of information as well as the obstacles. America was built by the teamsters who had the fortitude, ingenuity and desire to get past obstacles. 

Have any projects left you wondering, Why did I agree to do this one?

Can of worms projects we didn’t mean to put that much money into. We try to figure out in advance, Will this be too complex? Then you open the can of worms. All things are obtainable, but not always obtainable by the budget. 

Do any projects stand out?

I enjoy doing conservation and restoration. We’ve learned so much from vehicles with historical content. Now we understand the design, textiles, leathers, pigments and the engineering specifics of the wood species. There’s so much information when you get a historic vehicle like the last stagecoach we worked on, from Annisquam, Ma. It’s like opening a volume of encyclopedias.

The best museum projects would have to be the Oregon Trail replicas we’ve built. It’s an obscure wagon. There were thousands of them, but the emigrants used them up like old trucks. Those are fun. We’ve built covered wagons for trail interpretive centers across the West. Other vehicles that come to mind are the stagecoaches. We’ve restored Wells Fargo coaches that had original content in them—signatures, dates. We even found an upholsterer’s tool. They’re all fascinating. 

this article first appeared in wild west magazine

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He was a frontier lawman above reproach and probably made a greater impact on his assigned jurisdiction than any other badge wearer west of the Mississippi. Deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves was part Superman, part Sherlock Holmes and part Lone Ranger. But he was real, and he was black.

The larger-than-life African-American marshal worked in the most dangerous area for federal peace officers, Oklahoma and Indian territories, for 32 years. Recent research shows that before the two territories merged into the state of Oklahoma in 1907, at least 114 deputy U.S. marshals died on duty there. It was no picnic for members of the Indian police or local law enforcement, either, but the challenges and hardships were usually greatest for the deputy marshals.

The majority of federal lawmen were killed in the Cherokee and Creek nations of Indian Territory, within a 50-mile radius of Muskogee, in the Creek Nation. When recognizing the wild towns of the Wild West, Muskogee must be mentioned along with Tombstone, Arizona Territory; Las Vegas, New Mexico Territory; Dodge City, Kan.; and El Paso, Texas.

Born a slave near Van Buren, Ark., in July 1838, young Bass moved with his owner to north Texas in the 1840s. His owner, George R. Reeves, was a farmer, tax collector and sheriff before the Civil War. During the war, Colonel Reeves organized the 11th Cavalry Regiment for Grayson County, Texas. Bass Reeves said in a 1901 interview that he had been George’s body servant but that they had parted company (not on good terms, according to family history) during the war. Supposedly, Bass and George argued during a card game, and Bass knocked his master out cold. In Texas, a slave could be killed for such an act, so Bass headed for Indian Territory and found refuge with the Creek and Seminole Indians, learning their customs and language. (After the war, George Reeves would rise to become speaker of the House of Representatives in Texas before dying from a rabid dog’s bite on September 5, 1882.)

Exactly what Bass Reeves did during the Civil War after he left his master remains uncertain. One uncorroborated claim says that Reeves served in the U.S. Army as a sergeant during the conflict. It’s possible he could have been with one of the guerrilla Union Indian bands in the territory, such as the Cherokee Pins. He might also have served with the Union’s First Indian Home Guard Regiment, composed mostly of Seminoles and Creeks, under an Indian name. The Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw and Seminole), who earlier had been relocated from the Southeast to Indian Territory, fought on both sides during the conflict. Afterward, the western portion of the territory was taken away from them and set aside as reservations for Plains Indian tribes (Comanche, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Apache and Kiowa) who were subdued by the U.S. military.

By the early 1870s, Bass and his family (wife, Jennie, and four children; eventually there would be 11 children) were living in Arkansas. Although other blacks lived in the countryside near Van Buren, Reeves built a substantial home for his family right in the town proper on the riverfront. Several oral stories say that Reeves served as a scout and guide for federal lawmen going into Indian Territory in search of outlaws. A better employment opportunity came in 1875. That March, Judge Isaac C. Parker took over the Fort Smith federal court in Arkansas, which had jurisdiction over all Indian Territory and western Arkansas, and he promptly ordered his marshal to hire 200 deputies. At that time, the territory consisted of all the land that would become the state of Oklahoma except for the panhandle. This was the largest federal court, in terms of area, in U.S. history, and most likely there were never more than 70 deputies covering the vast area at any one time. Bass Reeves was one of the deputies hired that year. He was skilled with weapons, could speak several Indian languages and apparently knew the lay of the land. The federal police had jurisdiction over whites or blacks that were not citizens of the respective tribes in Indian Territory. The Indians had their own police and courts for their citizens. Noncitizens who committed crimes against the Indians would have to be arrested by deputy U.S. marshals and their cases heard in federal court.

Bass Reeves has been called the first commissioned African-American deputy U.S. marshal west of the Mississippi River, but this may not be true. A story in the “Indian Pioneer Papers” at the Oklahoma State History Museum in Oklahoma City tells of a posse led by one “Negro” Smith from Fort Smith in 1867. Smith was sent to catch a gang of outlaws who had robbed a stagecoach and killed the driver near Atoka, in the Choctaw Nation. The Cherokee Advocate reported on October 14, 1871, that a Cherokee Indian named Ross had killed a black deputy U.S. marshal on the banks of the Arkansas River opposite Fort Smith. Reeves, though, was undoubtedly one of the first, and he certainly became the most famous black deputy to work the Indian nations before statehood.

In the late 1870s, despite being a commissioned deputy U.S. marshal, Reeves served as a posseman and went into Indian Territory with more experienced lawmen, including Deputy U.S. Marshals Robert J. Topping and Jacob T. Ayers. Later, Reeves and his good friend Deputy U.S. Marshal John H. Mershon teamed up on occasion. Federal law mandated that deputies take at least one posseman whenever they went into the field. On extended trips into the territory, deputy marshals often brought two or more possemen, along with a guard and a cook. One or two supply wagons (sometimes referred to as “tumbleweed wagons”) would serve as headquarters on the prairie while the lawmen rounded up desperadoes. The Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad tracks in the territory were known as the “deadline.” Deputies couldn’t arrest anyone east of the tracks until they were on their way back to Fort Smith. The lawmen typically traveled west to Fort Reno and Anadarko, south to Fort Sill and then back to Fort Smith. This trip took in about 400 miles and would take one to two months depending on high water.

Reeves made catching criminals while in disguise part of his modus operandi. He did this throughout his years while working for the federal courts at Fort Smith, Ark., and Paris, Texas. Sometimes he would appear as a drifter, other times as a cowboy, preacher or farmer. For example, he once got a tip that some dangerous outlaws were holed up in a log cabin, so he dressed in farmer overalls and intentionally got his ramshackle wagon stuck on a nearby tree stump. When the four outlaws came out to help him get unstuck, he got the drop on them and brought them to justice.

In disguise or not, it was a dangerous business. The closest he came to losing his life, he said in a 1906 newspaper interview, came sometime in 1884 while riding the Seminole whiskey trail in search of four men, two white and two black, for whom he had warrants. His pursuit was interrupted by three brothers named Brunter—who had been accused of horse stealing, robbery and several unsolved murders in Indian Territory.

The Brunters got the drop on Reeves. With their guns pointed at the lawman, they ordered him to dismount and keep his hands away from his Colt revolver. Reeves played it cool, showing the brothers warrants for their arrest and asking them what day of the month it was, so that he could make a record for the government. The outlaws thought the lawman must be out of his mind. They told Reeves, “You are just ready to turn in now,” but they were laughing too hard and relaxed their guard. Reeves whipped out his Colt and killed two of the brothers as quick as lightning. While he was in the act of shooting those two, he grabbed the gun barrel of the third outlaw, who could only manage three harmless shots. Reeves hit the third Brunter in the head with his revolver, killing him. There would be no fees to collect on the three dead men, but there were now three fewer desperadoes infesting Indian Territory. Also in 1884, a benchmark year in Reeves’ long career, Bass and the noted Choctaw lawman Charles LeFlore arrested Texas horse thief Robert Landers right in Fort Smith. Reeves’ most celebrated gunfight occurred that same year. Jim Webb, the foreman of the huge Washington-McLish Ranch in the Chickasaw Nation, was his foe. A black preacher who owned a small farm adjacent to the ranch had let a fire get out of control, and it spread onto ranch land. Webb had scolded the preacher, but that didn’t satisfy his anger. He had then shot him to death. Webb was one tough hombre who had reportedly killed 11 men while living in the Brazos River region in Texas. Reeves was able to arrest Webb without incident but was forced to go after him again when the foreman jumped his bond.

In June 1884, Reeves located Webb at Bywaters Store at the foothills of the Arbuckle Mountains. Webb refused to surrender this time, and the two men had a running gunfight. After nearly being shot himself, Reeves got down from his horse, raised his Winchester and shot Webb twice from a distance of about a quarter-mile. Several cowboys and the owner of the store witnessed this gunfight. Heroics like that had caused the Muskogee Indian Journal to refer to Reeves as one of the best deputy U.S. marshals in Indian Territory. At that time, after Reconstruction, it was rare to find black federal policemen anywhere in the country except Indian Territory. Reeves and the other black deputies there would blaze a trail of justice and equality for all citizens of that federal protectorate. During the territorial era, at least 50 black deputy U.S. marshals served in Indian Territory.

Reeves stood out in most any gathering of marshals, white or black, and not just because he stood 6-foot-2 and weighed 180 pounds. He had a reputation for being able to whip any two men with his bare hands and manipulate six-shooters and rifles equally well with either hand. His most trusted weapon was a Winchester rifle, but he was also known to carry as many as three revolvers, two butt forward at his belt for easy access. Territorial newspapers reported that during his career he killed 14 desperadoes—but it could have been twice that number. He brought in a great many men alive, too, including outlaws with bounties on their heads. As a man hunter, he had few equals. On one occasion he hauled in 17 horse thieves in “Comanche country” near Fort Sill. Texas rustlers often ventured into Indian Territory to steal ponies from the Indian residents. Not that Bass Reeves was perfect. Nobody could be a lawman that long without chalking up a blemish or two on his record. On one of his 1884 trips into the Chickasaw Nation, Reeves shot and killed his black cook, William Leech. On April 8, while Reeves and his posse were camped near the Canadian River, he uttered a few choice words about Leech’s cooking, and Leech responded in kind. The possemen assumed the banter was all in fun, since Reeves and Leech had seemingly gotten along in the past. But this time things apparently got out of hand. Leech, according to one popular account, poured some hot grease down the throat of a puppy that Reeves had in camp, and the deputy marshal proceeded to shoot down the cook. Then again it might not have happened that way at all, and the dog might have belonged to Leech. In any case, nothing came of the shooting for a while.

The next year, 1885, was considerably less eventful. But in September ’85, Bass Reeves did swear out a warrant for the arrest of the infamous female outlaw Belle Starr, as well as Fayette Barnett, for horse stealing. Reeves and Belle Starr were apparently on friendly terms. Many times in dealing with people he knew, Reeves would inform them that they were wanted in Fort Smith and it might be better if they would turn themselves in so he wouldn’t have to haul them around the countryside. Although it is not known for sure that he made this suggestion to Mrs. Starr, she did soon turn herself in at Fort Smith—the only time on record that she did so—and reportedly said that she “did not propose to be dragged around by some federal deputy.”

In January 1886, two years after shooting his cook, Reeves was indicted for first-degree murder, arrested by Deputy U.S. Marshal G.J.B. Frair and held in the Fort Smith federal jail. It took six months before Reeves could make bond. On May 21, President Grover Cleveland appointed a new U.S marshal, John Carroll—the first former Confederate veteran that Reeves would serve under at Fort Smith. Whether Carroll had anything to do with the proceedings against Reeves is not known. The trial was finally held in October 1887. Eleven witnesses were called for the prosecution, while Reeves and his excellent attorneys requested 10 witnesses for the defense. Reeves testified that he had argued with Leech while in camp but that nothing had come of it. That same evening, Reeves said, a cartridge caught in his Winchester rifle and while trying to dis lodge the bullet, the gun accidentally went off. The bullet, the defendant continued, struck Leech in the neck, and though Reeves sent for a doctor, the cook expired before medical help could arrive. Reeves was acquitted of malicious murder, but because the murder trial had depleted his substantial savings, he had to sell his home in Van Buren and move his family to a house on the outskirts of Fort Smith.

Reeves resumed his productive ways in the field after this interlude, once again bringing in desperadoes and villains by the dozen. In the spring of 1889, Jacob Yoes, a Union Army veteran, was appointed U.S. marshal at Fort Smith. Late that year, Yoes sent Reeves after a gang of killers, and on December 30, Reeves sent a note to the marshal saying, “Have got the three men who killed Deputy Marshal [Joseph] Lundy [on June 14, 1889].” His three prisoners were Seminole Indians— Nocus Harjo, One Prince and Bill Wolf. In April 1890, Reeves captured the notorious Seminole Tosa-lo-nah (alias Greenleaf), who had murdered and robbed three white men and four Indians. Greenleaf had been on the run from the law for 18 years, and this was the first time he was arrested.

In November 1890, Reeves went after an even more famous Indian Territory outlaw, the Cherokee Ned Christie, who was accused of killing Deputy U.S. Marshal Dan Maples in May 1887. Christie had maintained his innocence but refused to come to the white man’s court, for he felt no justice would be served. Reeves and his posse attacked Ned’s hideout in the Cherokee hills, known locally as Ned’s Fort Mountain. Reeves was able to burn down the fortified cabin. At first, he believed Christie was trapped inside, but he later found out that the renegade had escaped. Christie swore vengeance on Reeves but failed to make good on the threat before a large federal posse killed Christie at Fort Mountain on November 2, 1892.

The first white and black settlers had been allowed onto Indian lands in 1889, when Oklahoma Territory, just west of Indian Territory, was opened. In a 1930s interview, Harve Lovelday, an early white settler in Pottawattomie County, described the scene in the territories:

In Old Oklahoma the West was West when the six-shooters worked out in the gambling halls and in the saloons of Asher, Avoca, Wanette, Earlsboro, Violet Springs, Corner, and Keokuk Falls about the time of 1889 and 1890….These small Western towns were inhabited by Negroes, whites, Indians, half-bloods, gamblers, bootleggers, killers and any kind of an outcast….

Bass Reeves, a coal-black Negro, was a U.S. Deputy Marshal during one time and he was the most feared U.S. marshal that was ever heard in that country. To any man or any criminal what was subject to arrest he did his full duty according to law. He brought men before the court to be tried fairly but many times he never brought in all the criminals but would kill some of them. He didn’t want to spend so much time in chasing down the man who resisted arrest so would shoot him down in his tracks.

The new Oklahoma Territory towns were different from the Indian Territory towns in that saloons were legal in the former. Profiteers—principally white men and women—could make a killing by buying liquor in Oklahoma Territory and bringing it into Indian Territory, as long as the deputy U.S. marshals didn’t catch them. The federal court for Oklahoma Territory was in Guthrie. Reeves, like many other deputy U.S. marshals, became cross-deputized so that he could work in both territories.

The worst saloon town in Oklahoma Territory was said to be the Corner, just across the boundary with the Seminole and Chickasaw nations. The term “bootlegging” supposedly came from the drovers, cowboys and ranchers who would put a flat bottle of whiskey in their boots and smuggle the contraband into Indian Territory for profit. The term “last chance” was coined here, because these border saloon towns offered the last chance to get legal whiskey before a traveler crossed into the dry Indian nations. On at least one occasion, Reeves reportedly killed a gunman in a Corner saloon who called him out for a gunfight.

In late June 1891, Reeves and his posse rode into Fort Smith with eight prisoners (five wanted for murder) from the Indian nations. The captured outlaws included William Wright, a black man; Wiley Bear and John Simmer, Indians; and William McDaniel and Ben Card, white men. McDaniel and Card had been arrested for allegedly killing John Irvin, a black man, but Reeves apparently didn’t have enough solid evidence to indict the pair. The Fort Smith Weekly Elevator attacked Reeves for chaining up the two men and dragging them around Creek country for nearly a month. Most likely, Reeves was reprimanded by Marshal Yoes, but there is no record of such action.

Reeves left Fort Smith around 1893 and transferred to the federal court at Paris, Texas. This court had jurisdiction over much of the Chickasaw and Choctaw nations in the 1890s. Reeves was stationed at Calvin, Choctaw Nation, and would take many of his prisoners to Pauls Valley, Chickasaw Nation, where a federal commissioner was stationed and there was a jail. Hearings would be held at Pauls Valley, and if necessary, criminals were transferred to the Texas court for trial. By the late 1890s, three federal courts were located in Indian Territory to hear major and minor cases—the Southern District at Ardmore, Central District at McAlester and Northern District at Muskogee. Federal authorities transferred Reeves to the Northern District, where he was first stationed at tiny Wetumka in the Creek Nation. By 1898 he was living in Muskogee, where he would stay until statehood in 1907.

Reeves escaped many assassination attempts during his career, one of the last occurring on the evening of November 14, 1906, at Wybark, Creek Nation. While riding in his buggy looking to serve warrants, he was fired upon under a railroad trestle by unknown parties. He returned fire, but nobody was hit. By that time, Reeves was focusing on arresting black and Indian felons, though he would still arrest white outlaws if the occasion called for it.

The last major gunfight that Reeves took part in erupted in Muskogee on March 26, 1907. A large group of black anarchists calling themselves the United Socialist Club had taken over a two-story house and declared that they could claim any property in town. Two city constables, John Colfield and Guy Fisher, were sent with eviction papers, only to be met at the door of the house by gunfire. Fisher was wounded, but escaped; Colfield was severely wounded and couldn’t move from where he lay. The U.S. marshal’s office was alerted, and Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal Bud Ledbetter, along with a black deputy U.S. marshal named Paul Smith and others, arrived on the scene. An intense gunfight followed. Ledbetter killed two of the offenders, and Smith saved Ledbetter’s life by killing one of the radicals who had Ledbetter pinned down. Reeves arrived late. After noting where most of the gunfire was coming from, he plugged an anarchist who was shooting down on the lawmen from an upstairs window. The lawmen killed two more of the group before the remaining seven anarchists surrendered. Constables Colfield and Fisher recovered from their wounds, and Ledbetter called Reeves “one of the bravest men this country has ever known.”

Even before that shootout, on March 8, 1907, the Oklahoma City Weekly Times-Journal ran a story headlined “He has Killed Fourteen Men: A Fearless Negro Deputy of the Indian Territory.” Two days later, on March 10, The Washington Post reprinted that lengthy article. It would be the most national exposure Bass Reeves received during his lifetime. And if accurate, it means that the black anarchist he killed later that month would have been No. 15.

When Oklahoma became a state on November 16, 1907, the federal office was downsized, and many of the lawmen found other jobs. Bass Reeves, now 68, took a job with the Muskogee police department, walking a downtown beat. Old-timers reported that Reeves would walk with a sidekick who carried a satchel full of pistols and that there was never a crime on his beat. Reeves would complete 32 years of service as a law officer without ever being reported wounded. He died at home of Bright’s disease on January 12, 1910, at age 71, and was buried somewhere in Muskogee. The exact location is not known today; it was probably either in the Old Agency cemetery or in a small black cemetery west of town on Fern Mountain Road. Reeves’ long service and remarkable dedication to duty could match any lawman of his time, and his six-shooter had been, as the two newspapers reported in March 1907, “a potent element in bringing two territories out of the reign of the outlaw, the horsethief and bootlegger, to a great common wealth.”

Art T. Burton, a native of Oklahoma, is a history professor at South Suburban College in South Holland, Ill. His 2006 book Black Gun, Silver Star: The Life and Legend of Frontier Marshal Bass Reeves is recommended for further reading along with his 1991 book Black, Red, and Deadly: Black and Indian Gunfighters of the Indian Territories. Originally published in the February 2007 issue of Wild West. To subscribe, click here. 

The year 1873 saw the introduction of two game-changing firearms—the Winchester Model 1873 lever-action rifle and the Colt M1873 Single Action Army (aka “Peacemaker”) revolver. What set them apart from the array of available arms was that they were among the first chambered for center-fire metallic cartridges to be used in tandem.

Each firearm initially used its own proprietary round. The Model 1873 was chambered for the .44-40 Winchester cartridge, which went on to become one of the most popular rounds in firearms history. Purpose-built for the U.S. Cavalry, the Peacemaker was initially designed with a 7½-inch barrel, for accuracy at longer ranges, and chambered for use with the hard-hitting .45 Colt round. Not to rest on its own laurels, Colt then offered civilian versions of its revolver chambered for Winchester’s increasingly popular .44-40 cartridge, as well as the latter’s .38-40 and .32-20 rounds, thus sparing anyone who owned both firearms from having to carry two different calibers of ammunition. As attested by the images on the following pages, everyone from lawmen and outlaws to everyday cowhands and shepherds to headline entertainers were soon snapping up both manufacturers’ Model 1873s.

Another aspect that set apart the 1873s was shrewd marketing, including testimonials from famed Westerners of the era. Winchester and Colt each advertised its guns through such motivated Western dealers as E.C. Meacham, of St. Louis, and Carlos Gove, of Denver. Winchester’s 1875 catalog featured praise from Wild West showman Buffalo Bill Cody, who wrote the company on behalf of prospective buyers, “For hunting, I pronounce your improved Winchester the boss.” Writer Ned Buntline, whose florid dime novels birthed many of the legends associated with Buffalo Bill, tirelessly hyped both the Winchester ’73 and the Colt Single Action Army. For much of his career Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, the man who in 1934 brought outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow to ground, carried a Colt Peacemaker he dubbed “Old Lucky.” Bill Tilghman, the famed U.S. marshal out of Oklahoma, was known to carry both a Winchester ’73 and a Peacemaker, as did notorious outlaws Billy the Kid and Pearl Hart, though clearly not to either manufacturer’s detriment. 

Winchester produced a whopping 720,000 Model 1873 rifles through 1923, while Colt rolled out more than 357,000 first-generation Single Action Army revolvers through 1940. By then both companies had claimed the title “The Gun That Won the West” for their respective Models 1873. The Peacemaker is still in production, and modern-day replicas of both firearms remain popular among present-day cowboy action shooters. They’ve certainly earned their reputation. 

this article first appeared in wild west magazine

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It was Shakespeare who wrote, “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.” The Bard was obviously unfamiliar with our brand of Western history, which inverted that truism. Consider the epitaph of famed Texas Ranger Captain Bill McDonald: No man in the wrong can stand up against a fellow that’s in the right and keeps on a-comin’. In a similar vein popular culture tends to paint every Western lawman as a Marshal Matt Dillon, that radio and television paragon of virtue who kept the peace in Dodge City, Kan.

Historian Jay Robert Nash, among others, has debunked the stereotypical image of the Western outlaw-gunman as the sociopathic product of a broken home who despises all authority figures. But few writers have debunked the idealistic stereotype of the Western lawman. Indeed, certain hagiographic historians universally laud them for their courage, dedication to duty and strong family ties. Even Nash refers to such officers “the few good men” who cleaned up the West.

A closer examination reveals a more nuanced view, for many, if not most, officers in the Old West worked both sides of the law, either out of necessity to supplement their meager pay or simply because they were bent that way. It is virtually impossible to name one notable lawman who did not have a few stains on his record. Such men didn’t go through the background checks that are standard today, and their records did not follow them around. Thus, a man could commit bank robbery or murder in New Mexico Territory, yet get hired on as marshal of a small Texas town. Big cities like Dodge did conduct careful searches for their marshals. Regardless, the kind of tough hombre needed to clean up a wild and woolly cow town didn’t figure to be a straight arrow. Just the opposite. The more dangerous reputation a man bore, the more likely he was to be hired for the job. Wild Bill Hickok didn’t earn his reputation with a gun by shooting tin cans.

Nor was it especially difficult to get away with working both sides of the street. The outlaw became a lawman simply by putting on a badge, and the lawman could operate a quiet side business in cattle rustling, extortion or gun-for-hire escapades without anyone being the wiser. The only recognizable difference between them was the badge, and any old body could slap on a tin star and cop an attitude. That became a serious enough concern in Fort Worth that in 1889 the City Council passed an ordinance making it a crime to impersonate an officer. The ordinance is known to have been enforced in only two instances—that fall when a couple of young bravos were fined $10 and $5 respectively in city court for “personating [sic] policemen.”

Lawmen and outlaws had a natural simpatico, derived oftentimes from having been brothers-in-arms in the recent Civil War, or perhaps from having driven longhorns up the Chisholm Trail together. Others were blood relations. Jesse James had no trouble cobbling a gang together from his brother and fellow Confederate bushwhackers after the Civil War. Of course, Jesse never felt moved to put on a badge. He kept to his side of the street. But for so many others the line between good guy and bad guy remained hazy. One wag said the only way to distinguish one from the other after a gunfight was to turn over the corpse and see if it was wearing a badge.

Those who knew such men personally saw past their dime-novel personas. Interviewed in 1931, Kansan Annie Anderson, a former dance hall girl who knew Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson and pals, insisted, “They were a bunch of cowards.” Though their actions certainly don’t bear out such an assertion, neither were they regarded as upstanding citizens by much of the population.

Men of Action

The familiarity between lawmen and outlaws was also due in part to the fact both groups comprised men of action. Thus, they had a rough, mutual respect for each other—that is, when not shooting at one another. Hired gun and sometime lawman Jim McIntire, for example, was always welcome in the home of Fort Worth Marshal Ed Terrell. Texas Rangers showed similar courtesy to Fort Worth marshal turned gun for hire Jim Courtright in 1884 when arresting him on a murder warrant out of New Mexico Territory. Tarrant County Sheriff Walter Maddox and Fort Worth Marshal Bill Rea treated the jailed fugitive more like an honored guest than a wanted man, thus it’s no surprise Courtright managed to escape with little trouble. When Fort Worth private detective Heck Thomas brought the body of murderer Jim Lee through Gainesville, Texas, in September 1885, he told a reception party admiringly, “He died game, fighting as long as there was breath in his body.” High praise indeed from the man tasked with bringing in the notorious Lee brothers, dead or alive.

Earlier that year, when U.S. Marshal Harrington Lee “Hal” Gosling was escorting two men to prison, a friend remarked the marshal treated them “more like friends than a brace of the most villainous desperadoes ever consigned to the keeping of an officer.” Gosling’s failure to take routine precautions enabled his prisoners to arm themselves and escape, killing the marshal and two others in the process. A lesson learned the hard way.

Even the worst of outlaws could count friends in law enforcement. An 1892 petition to pardon cold-blooded killer John Wesley Hardin, then serving time at the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville, bore the signatures of Tarrant County Sheriff John C. Richardson and former Tarrant County Sheriffs Walter Maddox and Ben Shipp. Ironically, the man Hardin had been convicted of murdering was a deputy sheriff.

Conversely, a hard-boiled outlaw might tip his hat to an honest lawman like Sheriff Tom Bell, of Hill County, Texas. In 1898 convicted murderer John B. Shaw wrote to Bell from his Cleburne death cell:

“Tom, [I knew] if I was caught, you would do it or cause it. It makes me love a man for him to rustle hard. I believe if a man is an officer, he ought to be an officer; if he is a thief, he ought to be a thief. I think more of [Johnson County Sheriff] Bill Stewart for rustling hard for me.” 

Shaw signed the note “respectfully” and even invited Bell to come see him before his date with the gallows. 

It didn’t hurt a lawman’s reputation to have a few formidable gunfighting friends he could call on if needed. While sheriff of Ford County, Kan., Bat Masterson benefited from his close relationship to the Earp brothers, Doc Holliday and Luke Short, not to mention brother Ed, a Dodge City policeman. The street ran both ways. When Short ran afoul of Dodge City’s powers that be in 1883, he called on Wyatt, Bat and other pals to back his play. They went down in history as the ironically named “Dodge City Peace Commission.”

The fact is some of the most notorious killers in Old West history wore a badge at one time or another. Edward Capehart O’Kelley is remembered today as the man who in Creede, Colo., on June 8, 1892, shotgunned Bob Ford to avenge the latter’s assassination of Jesse James a decade earlier. A certifiable sociopath, O’Kelley—nicknamed “Red” for his hair color and not his bloodthirsty nature—also happened to be a town marshal in nearby Bachelor, Colo.

Another Jekyll-and-Hyde type was Ben Thompson, who drank, gambled and shot his way across Texas before being elected city marshal of Austin in 1880. Wearing a badge did nothing to moderate the marshal’s violent ways, and he spent more time at the gambling tables than patrolling the streets. In 1882 Thompson killed San Antonio saloonman Jack Harris. Though the marshal was acquitted of all charges, Austin’s city fathers forced him to resign. Thompson’s closest pal, rustler-gunslinger King Fisher, also worked the other side of the law as a Uvalde County deputy sheriff. On March 11, 1884, the two were gunned down in Harris’ San Antonio saloon in a revenge killing. The Austin newspaper Texas Siftings recalled Thompson as “the best city marshal in Texas.” Not all his constituents would have agreed.

Henry Newton Brown was another well-known gunman with several notches on his pistol grips when serving as a lawman in Tascosa, Texas, and later as town marshal of Caldwell, Kan. While wearing the badge in Caldwell, he organized a failed bank robbery at Medicine Lodge, Kan., that got him lynched.

The good people of El Paso and the surrounding county had the bad judgment to make sociopathic killer Mannie Clements Jr. a constable and deputy sheriff. On being booted after his acquittal for armed robbery, he was assassinated in a city saloon in 1908.

David Kemp killed his first man in 1879 when he was but 15. Sentenced to hang, he was granted a pardon by the governor of Texas. In 1890 he relocated to Eddy County, New Mexico Territory, where he served as sheriff before killing his successor, Sheriff Les Dow, on Feb. 18, 1897. Found not guilty, Kemp settled into domestic life as a (thrice) married saloonkeeper.

The appropriately named Baz Outlaw was a member of the vaunted Texas Rangers with a predilection for gunplay when he drank too much, which was often. Though the fed-up Rangers ultimately discharged him, Outlaw parlayed his credentials into an appointment as a deputy U.S. marshal. On April 5, 1894, while on a bender in El Paso, he shot and killed a Texas Ranger before being gunned down by Constable John Selman.

Selman himself was no monument to justice. Before being elected constable of El Paso, he’d rustled cattle and terrorized citizens in Shackelford County as a deputy under crooked Sheriff John M. Larn. In addition to killing Outlaw, the corrupt constable back-shot Hardin, killing him, and engaged in repeated drunken quarrels. One such quarrel, with Deputy U.S. Marshal George Scarborough on April 2, 1896, got Selman killed. Despite his checkered career, his headstone bears the simple inscription John Henry Selman… El Paso Constable.

Another El Paso lawman of questionable virtue was Dallas Stoudenmire. Appointed city marshal in 1881, he spent a year doing a commendable job, which included gun battles with a host of ne’er-do-wells. Unfortunately, Stoudenmire too exhibited a weakness for alcohol, which made him belligerent and quarrelsome and led city fathers to fire him. Months later, on Sept. 18, 1882, he died as so many lawman-outlaws did, in a saloon gunfight.

Best known as a gun for hire, “Killin’ Jim” Miller served at various times as a deputy sheriff, town marshal and Texas Ranger. On Sept. 13, 1896, then Pecos Marshal Miller publicly gunned down former county sheriff and longtime nemesis Bud Frazer in a Toyah, Texas, saloon. It says something about Frazer’s reputation that a jury acquitted Miller. Later advertising his services as a paid assassin, Miller offered to kill anyone for $150.

By his early 30s “Mysterious Dave” Mather had spent much of his young life behind bars in Texas, Kansas and New Mexico Territory. Between jail stints the adept gunhand had no trouble finding work as a lawman. The difference in opinion regarding Mather’s reputation in Dodge City and Dallas, respectively, is mysterious indeed. In 1885 the Dodge City Times hailed him as a “good officer,” while the Dallas Daily Herald deemed him “a notorious horse thief, stage robber and murderer.”

Yet another lawman with a checkered reputation and colorful moniker was Fort Worth’s “Longhair Jim” Courtright, who served three terms as city marshal in the mid- to late 1870s. Depending on one’s perspective, he either tamed the town or tolerated a disgraceful degree of lawlessness. On losing his fourth run for office, he went wholly over to the dark side as a hired gun and extortionist. Courtright, too, died in a shootout, on Feb. 8, 1887—only it was in front of a saloon (Fort Worth’s White Elephant), as the fallen marshal had been gentlemanly enough to call out rival Luke Short for a proper showdown.

A Higher Standard

Not all bad behavior by badge wearers ended in death. On April 3, 1889, Fort Worth officers Jim Rushing and John W. Coker were tying one on in the red-light district known as Hell’s Half Acre when fellow officer Pat Stevens stepped in to arrest the raucous duo. When they resisted, all three men drew their weapons. Stevens fired a shot before terrified onlookers disarmed him, and cooler heads prevailed. It was only dumb luck no one was hit, let alone killed. Initially charged with “assault to murder,” Rushing and Coker were let off with a reprimand. After all, they were officers, and no one had been injured.

Rules governing officers’ behavior came late to Western law enforcement. In 1882 Dodge City Mayor Alonzo B. Webster drew up one of the first such set of rules for a department West of the Mississippi. Borrowed from similar codes back East, it called for officers to be “quiet, civil and orderly” and to maintain “decorum, command of temper, patience and discretion.” A year later the Galveston City Council laid down rules that included this challenge: “Policemen shall not become offended at any harsh or abusive language that may be applied to them, and they will not make arrests in their own quarrels or those of their own families.”

But it took Sam Farmer, who served two stints as Fort Worth marshal (1879–83 and 1887–91), to lay down the law in Texas with regard to using deadly force. Prior to his tenure it was common practice for officers to use whatever force they deemed necessary to do the job. Farmer set a higher standard for his force with 11 rules, including these notable few:

No. 3—Use no more force than absolutely necessary to make an arrest.

No. 4—Never make an arrest merely because someone is saucy toward you.

No. 10—Wear six-shooters out of sight and only use them in self-defense; anything more than that is illegal.

Of course, setting down rules on paper meant nothing if not enforced. And in Fort Worth at least, they must not have been, as the general run of lawmen didn’t noticeably improve after the turn of the century. Things still operated pretty much the same as they had in frontier days. Consider, for example, Captain Tom McClure. For much of his seven years on the force, the captain turned a blind eye to bootlegging and illegal gambling, presumably for a price. Not until 1922 did the police department get wind of things and force McClure into retirement. The city declined to prosecute, likely weighing the public embarrassment certain revelations would have caused. 

Passage of both the 1914 Harrison Narcotics Act and the 1919 National Prohibition Act actually spawned new temptations for officers. Recall that many virtually lived in saloons when not on duty—and sometimes while on duty—and more than a few died in gun battles in those same haunts. Others had moonlighted as bouncers or bartenders. It couldn’t have been easy for them to turn their backs on that part of their lives. Likewise, drug dealing had been another way for men forced to make do on the piecework “fees-and-fines” system to supplement their meager income. By 1922 the rumor mill in Fort Worth was rife with reports of “persons in police uniform” peddling illegal whiskey and narcotics. Investigating federal agents found the rumors to be true. The kingpin behind most of the illicit trade turned out to be not some drug lord or bootlegger but a special county policeman.

Sheriff departments also had their share of bad apples. The 1903 year-end report of the Fort Worth Police Department recorded the arrests of four of Tarrant County Sheriff John T. Honea’s deputies on various offenses. None of the cases made it into the newspaper. 

The Power of the Dark Side

Trying to delve into the psyches of men who lived a century or more ago is a challenge. What forces drove lawmen to the dark side? Money issues are only part of the equation. Inner demons? Drink? A thirst for power? Entitlement? Some combination of the above? Forensic psychiatrist R. Gregory Lande argues that the dehumanizing effect of the Civil War, particularly the horrors men had witnessed, was the biggest single reason for the postwar crime wave. Such a rationale also explains a related rise in alcoholism and drug use over the same period.

That said, no one answer fits all. The reasons certain high-profile lawmen went bad are less speculative. For instance, Deputy U.S. Marshals Bob and Grat Dalton decided there was more money to be made robbing trains than preserving law and order, while Mather associate Milt Yarberry, Albuquerque’s first town marshal, was simply a vicious bully who preferred a life of crime to living peacefully. On Feb. 9, 1883, after one of his victims showed up dead with a bullet in the back, Yarberry was marched to the gallows.

Men of Yarberry’s ilk treated the badge as a license to do whatever they pleased, and reform was slow to come. In 1908 Fort Worth mounted officer Hugh Glosson placed his horse in the path of two cars preparing to drag race down Hemphill Street. When their drivers sped past the officer on either side, Glosson yanked and leveled his sidearm at them before ordering the drivers out of their cars. As they were unarmed and had their lady friends with them, the drivers objected to Glosson’s threatening manner and filed a complaint with the police department. At the subsequent hearing Glosson said the cars had scared his horse, and he would only have shot out a tire had the drivers not pulled over. No surprise, the department sided with Glosson, who went on to a long and feisty career in uniform in Fort Worth.

Despite what one reads in today’s headlines, law enforcement has come a long way from the days when a “cowboy culture” prevailed in many departments out West. Professional standards are higher, rules are in place, and the public is less tolerant of official misbehavior. Only when we view Western law enforcement through the nostalgic prism of “the good ol’ days” do we risk buying into the dime-novel version of history. 

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For further reading on the topic author Richard Selcer recommends Texas Gunslingers, by Bill O’Neal, and Encyclopedia of Western Lawmen & Outlaws, by Jay Robert Nash.

In the hills 6 miles north of Three Forks, in south-central Montana, the Emerson Mining District had all the potential of being highly productive, but it never quite got going. Ironically, as the adjacent valley contains the headwaters of the Missouri River, the main obstacle it faced was a dearth of water. In the mid-1860s, when placer mining for gold was in style, local rancher and sometime prospector Al Nichols found promising quartz samples in a dry stream bed in these hills. He hauled a sackful of the rocks 4 miles to the Jefferson River just so he could crush them and sift the scree in his pan. The net result was about $4 worth of ore. Given the effort it took, he abandoned the idea as worthless.

Sometime in the early 1870s partners John Emerson, James Aplin, Frank Akin and Samuel Seaman were prospecting the same hills and sank a shaft to a vein of copper quartz they named the Green Eagle mine. The find attracted a cluster of hopeful prospectors, who registered several mines. But as the owners awaited financing from “Eastern moneymen” that never materialized, their claims amounted to little more than holes in the ground. Meanwhile, Green Eagle’s owners came to the realization that to develop a copper mine miles from any railroad or town would require a vast amount of capital, which none of them possessed, and at the time copper was not a valuable commodity. So, they too abandoned their claim. Asher Paul and George Lea had been working a nearby silver mine, though it promised only a small income, given the low grade of ore they found. The devaluation of silver in 1883 killed that operation. 

In 1885 Jacob Hopping took a renewed interest in the Green Eagle and deepened the shaft to 65 feet before the ore petered out. Partnering with Green Eagle co-founder Seaman, he then sank a nearby shaft the pair named the Burlington. Reportedly offered $100,000 for their mines, the partners declined. Given the nationwide financial panic and bank failures in the headlines, they replied tongue in cheek that they preferred to invest their money in the ground. Shortly thereafter they hit a massive fault and lost the ore seam again.

Also in the district, Josh Parker and Al Shedd operated a mine called the Crystal Canon, while Perry Parks and a partner recorded only as Campbell mined low-grade iron ore for a time. They shipped it as flux to a smelter recently built in nearby Toston to handle gold from the Radersburg Mining District. Other less-productive mines frequently changed ownership, either by sale or through relocation (i.e., jumping).

All this mining activity at the tail end of the 19th century gave rise to a settlement residents named Copper City, though the hamlet never amounted to more than a few homes, and there’s no record of a post office. Call it the ghost town that never was.

Finally, in 1905 investors made inquiries toward establishing a paying mine in the district. A year later Herbert G. Dunbar, a prosperous sheep rancher from Logan, and other wealthy partners from the Twin Forks/Bozeman region organized the Three Forks Mining Co. and consolidated a half dozen claims they renamed the Copper Star. “[The company] own six claims in one of the greatest undeveloped copper districts in the world,” the Three Forks Herald reported optimistically, “this being the opinion of several copper experts.” Sure enough, the ledge of ore running through the Copper Star was soon providing 2 to 60 ounces of copper per ton, with trace silver and gold. But then came the financial Panic of 1907, when investment money dried up, and work on the company shafts ground to a halt.

By 1916 Dunbar had a new partner, Jacob Hopping’s son, Carl, and the two of them reopened the Copper Star adits. That April 24 The Butte Miner interviewed Dunbar. “Well, we’ve got it at last,” the mine owner enthused. “We have cut into a vein about 4 feet in width and very high in its percentage of mineral. The assays run between 30 and 40 percent [copper]. We got this below the 350-foot level. Our hoist is good for a depth of 500 feet.” By June the partners had deepened the shaft from 300 to 400 feet, retimbered the original section of the shaft and replaced the old gallows frame with a modern hoist capable of extending to 1,000 feet.

At the outset of World War I the demand for copper had surged to astronomical heights, thus the partners seemed set. But the war and their prospects wouldn’t last. By 1920 the price of copper had plummeted. The downturn made only a small dent in copper production among the Butte mines, but it was enough to close the Copper Star. Around this time an English company took an interest in the district’s iron ore mine, purchased it and then sold it to the massive Anaconda Copper Mining Co., sparking a rumor Anaconda would reopen the district and build a large smelter in Three Forks. Nothing came of it.

All that remains of Copper City today is the concrete pad of the Three Forks Mining Co. building, rusty mining equipment and the dilapidated hulks of what a century ago must have been three substantial homes. Completed in 2019, the 22-mile Copper City singletrack mountain bike trail zigzags across hills potentially still laden with riches. 

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1–3. A pistol, a rifle and a shotgun

If you regularly read Wild West, you know better than to expect a rote list of Colts, Winchesters and Remingtons. That said, nearly everyone headed west craved a good pistol, rifle and shotgun. Between 1850 and ’60 the Colt revolver had an especially notable impact on the frontier experience, as did the Winchester rifle between 1870 and ’80. But in life-or-death situations, lesser-known guns could be no less critical. Following are five such pieces.

4. A 10-inch rifled pistol 

From 1810 through ’40—the era of the mountain man, the Santa Fe trade and the single-shot muzzleloader—a rifled pistol with barrel about 10 inches long—could well be a lifesaver. It was short and light enough so that a frontier dweller could carry two or, if he chose, even three or four. Four pistols, providing their owner with four fast shots before he had to reload, could deliver enough firepower to counter most threats. Moreover, the rifling made the pistol nearly as accurate as a rifled long arm. “With such a pistol,” civil engineer Newton Bosworth wrote in an 1846 treatise, “using both hands, I have never thought it a great matter to take a [prairie] chicken at the distance of 70 or 80 yards and have frequently done it at 100.”

5. Blunt & Syms six-shot dragoon pepperbox

Throughout the 1840s and ’50s the principal American makers of multibarreled pepperbox pistols were Ethan Allen and Blunt & Syms. Their products became widely popular, especially in California during the gold rush. While each turned out a .36-caliber “dragoon size” pepperbox, in a now-or-never situation the Blunt & Syms had the edge. As tests show, its trigger pull is smoother than that of Allen’s, and the B&S pistol fires the bottom barrel instead of the top, making it easier to stay on target during fast shooting.

6. A bar-hammer single-shot pocket pistol

In 1837 Ethan Allen patented a single-shot .28-caliber pocket pistol with a double-action, or “self-cocking,” trigger mechanism. Fitted with a top-mounted “bar hammer” (vs. a side hammer), the arm became so popular that at least four other gunmakers—Blunt & Syms, Bacon, Manhattan and Marston—turned out versions of it. Its light weight, double-action trigger and smooth contours, with nothing to snag on the pocket or belt, meant it could be drawn and fired in an instant. Henry Deringer’s pistols, despite their reputation, could not make the same claim. As with other single-shot pistols, users typically carried the bar hammer guns in pairs.

7. An extra-large-bore shotgun

In the late 1850s, when Memphis was an eastern terminus for the Butterfield Overland Mail, a major hardware dealer there, Lownes, Orgill & Co., was selling what it billed as “double duck guns,” with “fine laminated steel barrels—6 to 8 bore, 34 to 40 inches long.” On another occasion the firm advertised duck guns in “7 to 18 gage [sic].” Guns of 6 and 7 gauge (equivalent to .92 and .87 caliber, respectively, while the standard 12 gauge is .73 caliber) could throw heavy charges of .31- or .36-caliber balls—murderous at close range. When used with the popular Eley wire cartridge, a single discharge could be deadly at ranges approaching 100 yards, even against multiple assailants.

8. Lefaucheux 12 mm pinfire revolver

As early as 1859 firearms dealers in California and New Orleans were importing models of this revolver from France. Seemingly taking note, the Union imported more than 12,000 Lefaucheux during the Civil War, a federal inspector pronouncing it “a first-class arm, equal if not superior to the Colt.” It was shorter and handier than the typical big-bore percussion revolver, while its copper-cased, self-contained pin-fire cartridges made it far faster to reload.

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Millie Ringold had little time for either tumultuous Reconstruction-era politics or Americans’ changing attitudes toward the assimilation of freed slaves into a predominantly white society. Born into slavery back East, she moved to the mining camp of Yogo City, Montana Territory, in the centennial year of 1876. Though initially the only black person and only woman in camp, she was too busy to give it much thought.

Ringold was born in Virginia in 1845. After emancipation, she moved to Washington, D.C., there working as a nurse and servant for Major Nelson B. Switzer of the 3rd U.S. Cavalry. In 1876 she came up the Missouri River with the major and his family by steamship to Fort Benton, Montana Territory. A year later, when then Lt. Col. Switzer received transfer orders, Millie elected to remain in the frontier town crowded with hopeful miners.

At the time ramshackle settlements were popping up all across the Montana frontier on the backs of one strike after another. In 1879, when word of a promising follow-up gold strike at Yogo Creek (in the Little Belt Mountains of present-day Judith Basin County) reached Fort Benton, Ringold bought two condemned Army mules, a wagon and a load of provisions (including a barrel of whiskey) and joined the rush. 

In the rough town of Yogo City she opened a small hotel, restaurant and saloon. With the profits she made from that enterprise and such side ventures as taking in laundry, Millie bought and worked her own claims. The hardworking pioneer soon made her first hire, Abraham Carter, the only other black person listed in the 1900 census for the district. If racial slurs were leveled at either of them, witnesses kept their observations to themselves, for no surviving firsthand account reflects any such instance of discrimination.

Growing especially fond of Millie, the miners gave her the sobriquet “Bonanza Queen of Yogo City.” When they gathered at her place, she cheered them by playing her favorite tunes on the mouth harp, hand saw, washboard, dishpan or whatever else was on hand. Her admirers said she could make more music with an empty 5-gallon oil can than others could with a piano. Among her favorite tunes were “Coming Through the Rye” and “Coal Oil Johnny” (a phonetic adaptation of a song from the postwar play Coal Oil Tommy, by John Brougham, with Ringold’s own ribald phrase “bum bum soiree”). While Millie entertained the miners with her music and singing, a greater source of wonderment was her double row of front teeth and two tusklike canines protruding from her lower jaw. They often begged her to open her mouth so they could gawk at the rare dental phenomenon.

Meanwhile, the gold seekers found only scattered nuggets amid shoals of pretty blue pebbles that continually jammed their sluice boxes. Slavishly gold-oriented, the men tossed the nuisance pebbles back into the creek. As the miners drifted away one by one, Millie bought up their claims, certain there remained a seam of gold only she would find. Little did she know, a fortune was washing downriver.

By 1899 a British syndicate, whose investors had discovered the “pretty blue pebbles” to be high-quality sapphires, had opened the English Mine along Yogo Creek (see “Bothersome Blue Pebbles,” by Chuck Lyons, in the February 2019 Wild West). Among those who came to oversee the sapphire mine was 25-year-old Englishman Charles T. Gadsden. Though he had neither the education nor prior experience for the job, he demonstrated unswerving loyalty and superb ability as a manager and was eventually promoted to resident supervisor. He and wife Maude made no friends, nor wanted any, until they met Ringold. When or how they met is unknown, but Charles came to admire Millie for her tough-as-a-bear brawn as she drove her wagon or worked her claims dressed in men’s overalls or skirts made from gunnysacks. Short and squat, she presented quite a sight when driving, perched on the edge of the wagon seat, her feet dangling well above the foot of the driver’s box. On one occasion she drove the wagon straight across an icy river, shouting to her mules “Ho! Go long! Git in da. Pull ’em out!” Witnesses were in awe.

One old-time resident recalled visiting Ringold at home in her Yogo City hotel a few years before her death. “A smile of welcome at once puckered her black face into countless wrinkles and bared two tusklike teeth that pointed upward and kept her mouth from closing,” the friend recalled. “Her eyes were very dark and had a knowing twinkle in their liquid depths.” When Millie became too crippled by age and rheumatism to work her claims or drive her team, she eked out a living taking in washing and raising poultry. On his own initiative, Gadsden had the mine’s wagon and team haul supplies to Millie at no cost.

In December 1906 a visitor found Ringold gravely ill, and the county auditor summoned a doctor from nearby Utica to tend her at the public expense. Accounts of her death vary, but according to Gadsden, “She begged Dr. [Abram] Poska to bury her in old Yogo, and he said, ‘I cannot promise Millie, but I will do my best.’” Despite her wishes, county officials overruled such burial arrangements as too expensive. Charles personally drove the wagon that transported Millie’s body from Yogo City to a plot in the Utica Cemetery. 

On Ringold’s death Montana gained its newest ghost town, for the population at the diggings had dwindled from hundreds in 1879 to a handful and then to one—Millie Ringold, Bonanza Queen of Yogo City.

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Ham White (aka Henry W. Burton, aka Henry Miller) committed at least two dozen stagecoach robberies or attempted robberies in Texas, Arkansas, Colorado, Arizona Territory and California in a criminal career that stretched from 1877 to ’91—with several interruptions for prison time. According to records from Wells Fargo & Co., the typical stagecoach robber, or road agent, reached the end of his career (one way or another) after one or two robberies. Thus, two dozen represents something of an achievement, albeit a dubious one.

An obvious basis for comparison is the legendary Black Bart. Widely considered history’s most successful stagecoach robber, he waylaid nearly 30 stages in the California gold country between 1875 and ’83, and possibly three more in 1888 after a sojourn at San Quentin State Prison. As he always robbed in disguise, the exact number is disputed. Black Bart seems to have served as a role model of sorts for White. Contemporary newspapers compared the road agents, and on at least one occasion, while confessing to a robbery, Ham claimed Bart as his inspiration.

Mark Dugan, author of the biography Knight of the Road: The Life of Highwayman Ham White, deems his subject “the premier stagecoach robber in the United States,” noting that the determined road agent resumed his career in the wake of several extended prison sentences. In his 1899 autobiography A Texas Ranger, Napoléon Augustus Jennings asserted White “has been confounded many times with the notorious Black Bart but was far more daring than that ‘knight of the road.’”

Just how well does White stack up to the reputed master road agent? Does he fall short, meet or exceed the benchmark set by Black Bart?

White’s Young Career

Hamilton White III was born in Bastrop County, Texas, on April 17, 1854, to a wealthy farm family with respectable acreage. In 1875, at age 21, he ran afoul of the law over the revenge killing of neighbor James Rowe, who in 1867 had gunned down Ham’s father in a dispute over a hog range. Wounded in the knee by return fire from Rowe’s brother, White limped noticeably for the rest of his life. With a price on his head, he fled to west Texas, where for a year or so he made his living as a buffalo hunter. Escaping from two sets of would-be captors, White embarked on his first series of stagecoach robberies in 1877.

That March 7 White stopped the Waco-to-Gatesville stage at pistol point, relieving the driver of the U.S. mail and robbing six male passengers (four by some accounts), though allowing each to keep a dollar or two, one to keep his watchand refusing to rob the lone female passenger. That month, after paying a visit to his family in Bastrop County—heedless of the outstanding arrest warrant—White stopped four more Texas stages, two in one day. Remaining in the saddle for most of these robberies, he again targeted the U.S. mail and affluent male passengers.

After the neophyte highwayman indulged in an ill-advised spending spree, Texas Rangers in Luling arrested White on March 28 and turned him over to federal authorities in Austin. Convicted there on three counts of robbing the U.S. mails, he was sentenced to life at hard labor at the West Virginia State Penitentiary in Moundsville. A model prisoner, White gained the confidence of prison officials, who lobbied politicians in both Texas and West Virginia on his behalf. Obtaining a pardon from outgoing President Rutherford B. Hayes, the 26-year-oldex-con was released on March 8, 1881.

On returning to Bastrop County, White was promptly arrested by the sheriff on the outstanding warrant for the 1875 murder of James Rowe. In short order the fugitive jumped bail, fled the county and committed another series of stagecoach robberies. That May in east-central Texas he attempted three stage holdups, failing to stop one and retrieving little of value from the other two. On June 3 he robbed a stage near Gainesville, getting little from the three passengers but $1,000 from the mailbags. Moving on to Arkansas, White on June 15 stopped both the northbound Alma-to-Fayetteville stage and its southbound sister stage, which happened on the scene. Brandishing a pistol, he bound and blindfolded the drivers and their passengers, robbing them and taking the U.S. mail.

Shifting his sights west to Colorado, White robbed the Del Norte-to-Alamosa stage near Alamosa on the night of June 28–29 in a well-planned operation. Indeed, his preparations were elaborate. Blocking the stage by placing a canvas-shrouded tree limb in the road, he stopped it at pistol point. Aboard were 13 passengers, including a woman. Using a tripod-mounted reflector lamp to blind the driver and passengers, White bound their hands and shrouded their heads with cloth hoods. True to form, he refused to rob the female passenger or a one-armed male passenger and allowed another man to keep his gold watch. Still, White pocketed at least $1,800 from the U.S. mail and passengers before riding off, leaving the driver and passengers to free themselves and make their way to Alamosa. 

Arrested in Pueblo on June 29, White escaped from a moving train while being transported to Denver, only to be recaptured. Convicted in Pueblo for the Alamosa robbery, he was sentenced to life at hard labor at the Wyoming Territorial Penitentiary in Laramie. After White made another unsuccessful break for freedom, authorities decided the penitentiary wasn’t secure enough to hold him and ordered his transfer to the Detroit House of Correction in Michigan. While being transported there by train, he picked the lock on his handcuffs, attacked the escorting officer and secured his revolver. This latest escape attempt also failed, however, when Mrs. Alice Smithson of Denver, described as a “plucky woman,” choked White until others managed to subdue the prisoner. 

White had served less than six months in the Detroit House of Correction when the U.S. Department of Justice deemed that facility insufficient for an escape artist of his talents. When the warden of Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary refused to receive White, authorities delivered him instead to the Albany County Penitentiary in New York, amid considerable publicity.

White’s lawyers ultimately succeeded where their client had failed, effecting his release from prison in January 1887 owing to technical irregularities in his trial. Returning to Texas, White on July 28 again held up sister stagecoaches—the Austin-to-Fredericksburg and Fredericksburg-to-Austin stages—near Dripping Springs, in Hays County. Neither was carrying passengers, however, and he realized little from the U.S. mail.

On the night of September 29, at a spot outside Ballinger called Nichols’ Pasture, White robbed the San Angelo-to-Ballinger stage and, three hours later, the Ballinger-to-San Angelo stage. Following his usual modus operandi, he blindfolded the passengers, engaged in friendly banter with them and refused to rob the women aboard. Four nights later he robbed the San Angelo-to-Ballinger stage at the same location, taking the U.S. mail off the same driver, William Ellis. The very next night at the same location he robbed a buggy carrying the U.S. mail. 

Later that year White, going by the alias Henry Miller, popped up in the small town of Stephensville, in Erath County, where he married Nannie C. Scott on December 7. The couple settled in Duffau, also in Erath County. Little else is known Nannie Miller or their domestic life.

The following spring White was back at his profession. On April 20, 1888, returning to Nichols’ Pasture a fourth time, he robbed two conveyances—the San Angelo-to-Ballinger stage, again driven by the now familiar William Ellis, and a two-horse hack driven by Al Jacks. He blindfolded both drivers and all 10 passengers. While waiting for the Ballinger-to-San Angelo stage, which never came, he again curried favor with the passengers, going so far as to issue a hand-scrawled certificate absolving the unarmed male passengers of any charge of cowardice and returning to each enough money for a meal. 

On June 23 White held up the San Angelo-to-Ballinger stage once more, this time near Willow Water Hole Station and while traveling afoot. The driver was Jacks. White blindfolded the seven passengers, relieved them of their money, shared drinks all around from a whiskey flask one had been carrying, then rode off bareback on one of the stagecoach horses.

White returned to wife Nannie in Erath County before moving with her to Arizona Territory. Ham was far from through with stage robbery, though.

In and Out of Prison

On Nov. 23, 1888, at Oneida Station, near Casa Grande, A.T., White awaited the Florence-to-Casa Grande stage. He was masked, wielded a sawed-off shotgun and had wrapped a blanket around his hips to conceal his limp. While waiting, he detained and robbed a doctor in a buggy and stopped but did not rob a man driving a wagon. As the stage approached, the driver, spotting White and his victims, believed he was being robbed by three men and quickly stopped. White relieved him of four mailbags and a Wells Fargo express box.

Foolishly, this time White trailed the stage into Casa Grande, where he was promptly recognized and arrested. In a plea bargain he admitted to one count of robbery of the Wells Fargo express box and was sentenced to a dozen years at the Yuma Territorial Prison.

In prison White learned to make walking canes and expanded the craft into a viable business. With his earnings he was able to both support his wife and hire a law firm to look into a pardon. On Jan. 20, 1891, acting Governor Oakes Murphy did pardon White, ostensibly owing to his restoration of the loot from his last holdup, his commendable support of his wife and his undeniable industriousness. It didn’t hurt that the prison at Yuma was overcrowded, or that White had sat trial under his alias, Henry Miller, and authorities were embarrassingly unaware their prisoner was, in fact, repeat offender Ham White.

Though his newly learned craft offered a respectable career, White couldn’t resist robbing stagecoaches. On March 7 he attempted to rob the Weaverville-to-Redding stage just outside Redding, Calif., but the preoccupied driver passed him by. White then exchanged fire with shotgun messenger Henry Ward and wounded the driver, though not seriously. On March 19 White again tried to rob the same stage. This time the driver noticed him, no messenger was riding shotgun, and Ham managed to stop the stage at the point of a revolver. Ignoring the two passengers, he demanded two express boxes and made off with an undisclosed amount of gold.

Four days later authorities arrested White in Los Angeles. Convicted that May in federal court in Florence, A.T., of the Casa Grande robbery of the U.S. mails, he was sentenced to 10 years at hard labor at California’s San Quentin State Prison. Weeks later, attempting to escape while en route to San Francisco, he got lost in the Arizona Territory desert and was turned in by local ranch hands. White finally arrived at San Quentin on June 15. Managing again through good behavior to get his sentence reduced, he was released on Dec. 26, 1897. While in prison he’d contracted tuberculosis.

By then in his 40s, ill and likely demoralized, White resorted to increasingly desperate measures to earn a living. On May 15, 1898, he tried to stop a locomotive on the San Antonio & Aransas Pass Railroad, but the train simply plowed through the obstacles he’d placed on the track. He then tried to extort money from the same railroad by anonymously threatening damages before actually setting fire to a cotton platform and a bridge. Authorities finally caught up to him on June 21 as he sought to collect $6,500 in extortion money. Convicted in Bexar County of conspiracy to destroy and injure a railroad, White was sentenced to two years in the Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville. Transferred to a prison farm in Colorado County, he escaped on June 16, 1899. After a brief visit to brother John’s home near Bastrop, White held up travelers in Llano County. Arrested for the last time in Hays County on July 10, he was convicted of robbery in Llano County and sentenced to 15 years at Huntsville, concurrent with his unexpired term for conspiracy. Owing to White’s tuberculosis, authorities transferred him to the Wynne Farm, a Huntsville sanitarium for ailing convicts, where he died on Dec. 27, 1900.

Black Bart

Charles E. Boles (aka Charles Bolton, aka Black Bart) was born in England in 1829. His family immigrated to America the following year and took up farming in Jefferson County, N.Y. In 1849 and again in ’52 Charles tried his luck in the California goldfields, first with cousin David, then joined by brother Robert. Like most other hopefuls they failed to hit pay dirt, then David and Robert fell ill and died. Charles returned home, married and fathered four children. A dutiful Northerner, he enlisted in the Union Army at the outset of the Civil War. Boles distinguished himself in combat, participating in 17 battles and being thrice wounded. But the harrowing experience did little to temper his gold fever. In 1867 he left for the Montana Territory goldfields, abandoning his wife and kids.

By 1875 Boles was leading the life of a San Francisco gentleman, his frequent absences from town ostensibly for the purpose of overseeing his mining interests. In fact, he supported his extravagant lifestyle by robbing stagecoaches passing through his former haunts in gold country. The unsuccessful prospector had found a more creative way of mining gold and turned out to be a highly successful road agent.

Ever the gentleman, Boles was always scrupulously polite and never robbed passengers, going so far as to hand back a purse tossed from a stage by a frightened female passenger. His interest was only in the Wells Fargo express box and the U.S. mail. He would wait for a stage at a point in the road where the driver was forced to slow his team, such as an upward incline. Brandishing a shotgun, Boles would block the lead horse and so halt the vehicle. He disguised himself in a flour sack mask and long linen duster, sometimes also covering his boots with sacks or rags. He worked alone, approached stages afoot and avoided any with armed messengers aboard. Indeed, he fled at the least sign of armed resistance and later claimed his shotgun was always unloaded. Though older than most road agents—in his 40s and 50s at the time of his robberies—he was capable of hiking long distances and consistently able to evade mounted posses. Known for his whimsical temperament, he left original poems at two of his holdup sites, signing them “Black Bart, the P o 8.”

For eight years Boles proved a thorn in the side of James B. Hume, Wells Fargo’s chief detective. Black Bart’s undoing came during his foiled last holdup attempt, on Nov. 3, 1883, when the wounded, fleeing road agent inadvertently left behind a handkerchief with a laundry mark. Detective Harry Morse, an associate of Hume, managed to trace the handkerchief to a San Francisco laundry, which identified the owner as Charles Boles. Black Bart served four years and two months in San Quentin. On his release he may have engaged in three additional stagecoach robberies before seemingly vanishing from history.

Head to Head

So, how do these storied road agents compare?

The older of the pair when active, Black Bart worked alone, was well disguised, took fewer risks and stuck to a tried-and-true methodology. Steering clear of the richer pickings aboard stagecoaches guarded by shotgun messengers, he preferred to forgo risk and settle for more meager returns. Indeed, despite his heroic military record, he avoided violence and literally ran away when confronted by armed resistance. Boles was very polite and never robbed
passengers. His interest lay solely in the Wells Fargo box and the U.S. mail.

Ham White was a younger man, in his 20s and 30s during his road agent career. Like Black Bart, he worked alone and was polite and accommodating to passengers, though, unlike Boles, he did rob them. While both men sought to avoid violence, White did shoot a driver on one occasion. There were also differences in their techniques. Boles used a shotgun, or at least brandished one, while White generally used a pistol. Boles always approached stages afoot, while White often robbed them from horseback. Boles was always masked. Though White used a mask on occasion, he more often bound his victims and then put hoods or blindfolds on them.

White took more risks, such as robbing passing stagecoaches on the same line on the same day and returning to the same site for multiple robberies. He did exhibit flashes of genuine ingenuity, as the 1881 Alamosa robbery clearly demonstrates. But his record as a road agent proved far more erratic than that of Boles, and he often displayed serious lapses in judgment. In March 1877, for example, he visited family in Bastrop County, risking arrest for murder. That same month he called attention to himself in a spending spree that got him arrested by Texas Rangers in Luling. Most egregious, after the 1888 Casa Grande robbery he showed up at the destination of the robbed stagecoach, practically asking to be recognized and caught.

White employed his considerable creative talents to escape custody—legally and illegally—on several occasions. Black Bart, on the other hand, fully cooperated with authorities when arrested. 

When evaluating the “performance” of a road agent, three criteria present themselves: The number of stagecoaches waylaid, the aggregate value of loot stolen and the cumulative time spent in prison. 

Black Bart wins the first category, having committed some 30 stage robberies to White’s two dozen.

It is difficult if not impossible to assess the value of the respective loot each road agent stole, as newspaper reports varied or were inaccurate. Complicating matters, the U.S. Post Office usually didn’t report the value of stolen mail, and companies like Wells Fargo had a vested interest in underreporting losses, as robberies were bad for business. That said, Black Bart lived the life of a San Francisco gentleman on his ill-gotten gains, while Ham White enjoyed no such luxury.

It is when considering the time each spent in prison the comparison proves especially stark. Boles spent just over four years behind bars, while White’s time in custody adds up to nearly 21 years. Even if we omit White’s incarcerations for crimes other than stage robbery, we still arrive at a stiff 18-plus years.

Taken as a whole, then, it appears Black Bart merits his title as the premier lone stagecoach robber of the American West. 

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For further reading on this topic author Daniel R. Seligman recommends Knight of the Road: The Life of Highwayman Ham White, by Mark Dugan; Black Bart: The True Story of the West’s Most Famous Stagecoach Robber, by William Collins and Bruce Levene; and Gentleman Bandit: The True Story of Black Bart, the Old West’s Most Infamous Stagecoach Robber, by John Boessenecker.

Though diminutive Texas Ranger Ira Aten (1862–1953) looks more Boy Ranger in this circa-1883 cabinet card, he was a big noise in his day. The second of four sons born to a circuit-riding Methodist minister, Ira moved with his family from Illinois to Round Rock, Texas, in 1876. The newly arrived railroad brought prosperity to town, inevitably drawing outlaws, and on July 20, 1878, Rangers mortally wounded Sam Bass as he and his gang cased the local bank. Among those who witnessed the shootout was Aten, who was inspired to join the force. 

In the spring of 1883 the 20-year-old enlisted in Company D of the Frontier Battalion He served six years with the Rangers, rising to sergeant. Aten’s most storied exploit came in 1888 amid a fence-cutting war in Navarro County, when drought prompted stockmen to fence off coveted land and water, and vigilantes responded by repeatedly cutting the barbed wire. Tasked with stopping the fence cutters, Aten placed booby-trapped dynamite charges at certain disputed sections. When Texas’ adjutant general ordered the explosives removed, Aten did so by blowing them up, ensuring a rumor spread that other charges remained in place. Little surprise, the fence cutting stopped.  

Aten later served as sheriff of Fort Bend and Castro counties. He’s also linked to the XIT Ranch through his 1892 marriage to Imogen Boyce, a cousin to that famed spread’s general manager. Three years later Aten hired on as foreman of the XIT’s central Escarbada division. To protect its steers, he raised a force of 20 hands, including former Rangers, all armed with Winchesters, though in this earlier portrait Aten is holding a Whitney-Burgess-Morse carbine, a precursor to Colt’s short-lived venture into rifle making.

In 1904, Aten moved his family to California, where he died at age 90 of pneumonia on Aug. 5, 1953. His exploits earned this last of the old guard posthumous induction into the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame in Waco. 

Stagecoach robbery in the Old West was a risky endeavor. Authorities thwarted, caught or killed most road agents within a few attempts. (The same holds true for bank robbers, then and now.) Had such outlaws approached their “work” more cautiously, they might have avoided prison time (or worse) or at least postponed their day of reckoning. Charles E. “Black Bart” Boles, the most successful of Western highwaymen, was a true master of his profession, if unworthy of emulation. Had he written a handbook, it might have read like the following.

Planning

Study the stagecoach line schedule and, if possible, get advance intelligence on what a stage is carrying. While the presence of an armed “shotgun messenger” in the seat up beside the driver suggests a valuable cargo, it increases the likelihood you’ll have to exchange fire and might not survive the robbery. Black Bart sought to avoid messengers, preferring the prospect of reduced profits to the risk of armed resistance.

Scope out the terrain beforehand and pick the holdup site carefully. It should be a remote location, preferably at the brow of a hill, a bend in the road or another spot that will force the driver to slow down. Make sure there is sufficient roadside concealment and stash any horses you might need for a getaway well away from the holdup, as the horses pulling the stage might react to them and alert the driver.

Partners

You are well advised to have as few partners as possible. The fewer partners, the fewer ways you’ll have to split the proceeds. More important, you’ll run less risk of someone getting caught and “peaching” on you. Assume your partner—no matter how close a friend or relative—willspill the beans if caught, as the prospect of a reduced sentence is a powerful inducement. Black Bart always worked alone.

Equipment

Most road agents’ firearm of choice is a shotgun, which is simple to operate and sufficiently intimidating. Black Bart used a double-barrel he later claimed was never loaded. On the two occasions he did meet with armed resistance, he fled—a good example to follow, however humiliating. You’ll live to rob another day.

Express companies like Wells, Fargo & Co. use heavy wooden boxes or metal safes, the latter often bolted to the floor of the coach. Be sure to bring a pick, hammer and cold chisel or similar set of tools capable of opening a box or safe.

On Dec. 4, 1875, highwayman Dick Fellows waylaid the Los Angeles-to-Bakersfield stage and secured the express box without incident. But in an egregious instance of bad planning, he lacked tools to open it. When Fellows tried to load the strongbox on his horse, the unfamiliar burden spooked the animal, causing it to bolt. Then, while dragging the box to a hiding place, Fellows toppled off a railroad embankment and broke his left leg and foot. Concealing the box as best he could, he limped to a nearby farm and stole another horse. But a local posse was soon on Fellows’ track, as the stolen mount wore a readily identifiable mule shoe on one hoof. The luckless road agent was quickly
caught and arrested, all for the lack of a pick.

Technique

One should carry out the actual robbery afoot. As the stagecoach approaches, step from hiding into the path of one of the lead horses. That both prevents the team from moving and discourages gunfire, as it places you close to a valuable animal. 

Next, level your weapon and make your demand. Speak as little as possible. Disguise yourself beforehand with a hat and a mask and conceal any tattoos or distinctive scars. Again, keep your horses well out of sight, as they, too, might link you to the scene. 

Passengers

It is best to avoid robbing passengers, as it will take precious time for them to hand over valuables, and one might get bold and offer resistance. If you insist, treat them as gently and courteously as possible. Nothing motivates a sheriff’s posse—or, worse, a vigilance committee—like reports of passenger abuse. When eight men robbed a stage bound from Virginia City, Montana Territory, in Portneuf Canyon on July 13, 1865, killing four passengers and wounding the messenger, vigilantes pursued five of the bandits into Colorado Territory and summarily hanged them—legality and jurisdiction be damned.

Black Bart was overtly polite to passengers, especially women, and never robbed them.

Getaway

Be certain your getaway horses are healthy, well-fed animals, capable of outrunning or outlasting those of a posse. Borrow a page from Jesse James. While the James-Younger gang seldom robbed stages, preferring banks and trains, Jesse carefully chose his horses and was deft at escaping mounted posses. 

For his part, Black Bart always escaped afoot. Exceptionally fit for a man in his 40s and 50s, he could travel long distances through rough terrain that might deter a horse.

It is best to depart the area entirely to avoid local sheriffs, marshals and posses—all of whom are limited in their geographical jurisdiction. Of course, that won’t help if U.S. marshals, Pinkerton men or Wells, Fargo agents are after you, as they aren’t restricted by county or state boundaries. Likewise, vigilantes are the wild card you never want to draw.

Disposal of the Proceeds

Spend the proceeds quietly. In the Portneuf robbery described above, stage driver Frank Williams was suspected of collusion with the bandits and later observed living it up in Salt Lake City. Vigilantes finally caught up with him in Colorado Territory and, after hearing his impassioned confession (which implicated his partners), hanged him from a cottonwood tree. 

Last Word

Black Bart’s track record notwithstanding, stagecoach robbery is a poor career choice. Try, try again, and you’ll likely get caught. Even if you scrupulously follow the above recommendations, odds are you’ll ultimately wind up behind bars. Even Black Bart was caught in the end. Also note, the last known stagecoach robbery out West, at Nevada’s Jarbidge Canyon, took place on Dec. 5, 1916. All three suspects were arrested and imprisoned. The $4,000 in loot was never recovered. Now, treasure hunting—there’s a profession to consider.

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Bad, bawdy and bankable during its 1880s heyday, Colorado City blossomed as one of the Lone Star State’s major cattle towns, only to wilt away within the decade like a funeral wreath beneath the scorching west Texas sun. When the Texas & Pacific (T&P) Railway came to Colorado City in 1881, west Texas and eastern New Mexico Territory cattlemen and their herds followed, prompting an economic boom that made the community the last, if least remembered, of the great cow towns that dotted the American West between 1865 and ’90. 

Perched on the banks of the Colorado River, the railhead at Colorado City was central to the development of the region, so much so that the town earned the moniker “Mother City of West Texas.” The community provided not only vice and nice for area ranch hands but also supplies and building materials for regional ranches and other nascent communities seeking prosperity and permanence in west Texas and the Texas Panhandle. The latter distinction would prove its undoing.

Settling a Boomtown

What started on Sept. 1, 1880, as A.W. Dunn’s 25-by-60-foot store with a dirt floor, plank walls and a canvas roof evolved into west Texas’ first boomtown. Colorado (as the settlement was known before opening a post office and proclaiming itself a city) developed an early reputation as the lustiest and roughest town between Fort Worth and El Paso. Though Dunn settled the site, the burgeoning city owed its decade of economic significance to financier Jay Gould, among the most unscrupulous and reviled business magnates of the 19th century.

Chartered by Congress in 1871 to extend from Marshall, Texas, to El Paso, where it would connect with the Southern Pacific, the T&P experienced financial difficulties in 1876 that halted construction at Fort Worth. For more than three years all work on the T&P stopped while Gould sought investors to revive the moribund project. Meanwhile, the Southern Pacific muscled its way eastward through El Paso and 92 miles farther to Sierra Blanca. Westward tracklaying on the T&P resumed on April 1, 1880, reached Colorado City on April 16, 1881, and finally linked up with the Southern Pacific at Sierra Blanca on Dec. 16, 1881. 

Its riverside locale made Colorado City special among rival railheads along the route. Cattle can gulp down as many as 15 gallons of water each on hot days, and the Colorado River provided arriving herds plentiful, albeit brackish, water. Besides beeves, the community also shipped out sheep and wool, securing its place as a regional livestock hub. 

When the T&P arrived, Colorado City had already grown to include 12 merchants, five saloons, three hotels, two livery stables, two wagon yards and a restaurant, plus three lawyers. By 1884 it boasted 75 merchants, 28 saloons, seven billiard halls, four hotels, four theaters, two banks, two livery stables, a 75-by-100-foot skating rink and a mule-drawn streetcar service that ran from downtown east to a 60-acre city park with a pavilion, beer garden, zoo and racetrack. Professionals hanging up their slates included 17 doctors, 12 lawyers, seven peddlers, three land agents, two photographers, two lightning rod salesmen and a dentist.

That same year English novelist Morley Roberts visited Texas—“the land of revolution and rude romance and pistol arbitration,” as he called it—to see his brother in Colorado City. “My impressions of the town and its people were favorable,” he wrote. “There were many men walking round the streets dressed in wide-brimmed hats, leather leggings with fringe adornments and long boots with large spurs rattling as they went. They were mostly tall and strong, and I noticed with interest the look of calm assurance about many of them, as if they had said to themselves: ‘I am a man, distinctly a man, nobody dares insult me; if anyone does, there will be a funeral—and not mine.’”

Locals seemed to carry fewer guns than Roberts, having read Bret Harte stories, had expected. But his brother soon disavowed him of that notion, revealing “that almost everybody in town carried revolvers concealed under his coattails or inside his waistcoat, and that people were occasionally shot in spite of the peaceful look of the place.”

In Reconstruction-era Texas state laws and local ordinances limited the carrying of weapons in public. A detail of Texas Rangers stationed in the area since 1877 often enforced those restrictions. But while the weapons may have been hidden, violence was all too painfully obvious at times.

Controversial Killings

Soon after the first T&P train rolled into town in April 1881, one snarky reporter quipped, “Colorado City has started out with a gross population of 250 cutthroats and gamblers.” Such hyperbole aside, ne’er-do-wells did inevitably follow the tracks.

Within a month Colorado City recorded its first killing, not by an outsider, but by a trio of Texas Rangers. By most accounts cattleman William P. Patterson, the deceased, was a popular and likeable fellow—except when drunk. That January he’d lost by a single vote an election for sheriff of newly organized Mitchell County. His victorious rival was Texas Ranger Richard C. “Dick” Ware, a lawman involved in the 1878 fatal shooting of notorious train robber Sam Bass in Round Rock, Texas.

In the wake of his loss Patterson took to drink. During a binge that early May he shot up the town until Rangers disarmed and chained him to a mesquite tree, as Colorado City lacked a jail. Shortly after midnight on May 17 the recently freed Patterson started firing into the air outside the Nip & Tuck saloon. When a trio of patrolling Rangers—Corporal J.M. Sedberry and Privates Jeff Milton and L.B. Wells—investigated, they spotted Patterson and companion Ab Adair ambling down the street.

Confronting the pair, the Rangers asked who had done the shooting. Patterson pled ignorance. A dubious Corporal Sedberry demanded to check the cattleman’s pistol. “Damn you,” Patterson answered, “you will have to go examine somebody else’s pistol!” With a nod, Sedberry and rookie Ranger Wells moved to grab Patterson’s arms, but the muscled cowman broke free, yanked his pistol and fired at the corporal, who dodged the bullet but suffered powder burns. Before Patterson could fire again, Milton pulled his .45 and dropped him dead. The frightened and inexperienced Wells then shot the downed Patterson a second time as he lay on the street.

As word of the shooting spread, the crowd of cowmen at the bar inside the Nip & Tuck clamored for vengeance and the Rangers’ lynching—that is, until fearless Milton strode in with his Winchester leveled at the agitators.

When Sheriff Ware arrived, Sedberry, Milton and Wells turned themselves over to his custody, and tensions eased. Two days later Ware escorted the trio to their examining trial in the temporary courthouse. The justice set bond at $1,500, which local citizens sympathetic to the Rangers’ efforts to keep order soon provided. Though indicted for the killing, all three Rangers were exonerated two years later after a change of venue and a trial in Taylor County.

Deputy Sheriff Wayne B. Parks never received his day in court after a controversial 1885 shooting in Page & Charley’s saloon. That February 4 Ike and Joe Adair, sons of a prominent local cattleman, raised such a ruckus in the saloon’s gambling room that Deputy Parks had to step in to quell the commotion. The brothers took offense. Ike bolted from their table with gun in hand and aimed for Parks, who grabbed Ike’s arm. As they grappled, Joe opened his pocketknife, got behind Parks and slashed at the deputy’s head. Parks then yanked his pistol and blindly shot over his shoulder at the slasher while trying to keep his sibling from shooting. Joe collapsed to the floor with a bullet through his heart. The deputy continued wrestling with Ike until City Marshal Jim Woods arrived to disarm the gunman, ending the confrontation but not the rancor. 

Though Parks was indicted for murder, animosity lingered for weeks among Adair’s family and friends. Three months later the deputy killed an inmate named Middleton during a May 3 escape attempt from the second-floor jail of the Mitchell County Courthouse. Middleton, an accused horse thief, jumped jailer T.J. Robinson, who was delivering supper to the prisoners. Hearing the commotion, Robinson’s wife dashed upstairs with a pistol and held off Middleton until Parks bounded up the steps to assist. When Middleton moved to resume his attack on the jailer, the deputy shot him through the head. A coroner’s jury ruled the killing justifiable.

Late on the evening of June 6 Parks was standing at the intersection of Oak and Second streets, speaking with friends, when an unknown assailant approached within 20 feet, took a potshot at Parks, then vanished in the night. Though Parks emerged unscathed, the deputy ran out of luck that October 29 following an opera house ball. After seeing his lady safely home around midnight, Parks started for his place, only to be shotgunned from ambush by someone in hiding. Parks dropped with 10 buckshot pellets in his neck and torso, living just long enough for neighbors to hear his moans.

Investigators found tracks and signs indicating one man had waited with two horses behind a tree while an accomplice—described by a Fort Worth newspaper as “some unknown fiend”—fired the fatal blast. Though suspicions fell on Adair family and friends, and authorities offered a $5,000 reward, Parks’ killers were never identified. 

Parks was the second local lawman to have been killed that year. On May 28 gambler Ben Jacobs had shot and killed Deputy City Marshal W.B. “Black” Hardeman in a “variety bawdy house in the west end,” as one newspaper described the crime scene. “West end” was a euphemism for the town’s red-light and seedy saloon district. Details of the dispute between Hardeman and Jacobs remain murky, though news accounts reported Jacobs shot the deputy in the abdomen, left breast and face.

An “Arrangement” with the Law?

So common were Colorado City gunfights that one newspaper in 1884 flippantly detailed a minor encounter. “There was, as the ‘boys say,’ a six-shooter play made in the Favorite saloon on Oak Street last night, but nobody was hurt,” the reporter noted. “Officers and friends to the parties being near, the difference was soon adjusted.” Not all gunplay in town occurred in the west end. On May 28, 1886, a serious shooting broke out in a downtown photography gallery after one Amanda Bradley, described as “an inmate of a bagnio,” or brothel, threw a fit. Ordered to leave by proprietor F. Chapman, the woman departed and bitched about the insulting eviction to gambler Jack Martin, who strode to the studio to avenge the affront to the lady of questionable virtue. After the gallant Martin threatened Chapman, the photographer repaid Martin’s chivalry with a fatal blast from a shotgun that “filled his carcass with shot,” according to one news account, “and he went the way all such characters should go.”

Colorado City’s police blotter recorded a variety of other violent incidents in the 1880s. Sheriff Ware held off a lynch mob intent on dispensing immediate justice to an accused child molester; a saloonkeeper attempted to murder a prominent businessman; a local resident shot his mistress before killing himself; an assailant with a sheep-shearing blade engaged in a “serious cutting affray” that left the victim with protruding entrails; and authorities discovered a mystery man with a fractured skull laid out in a freight car. T&P agent J.W. Ayers, who arrived in town in 1883, recalled no fewer than 16 fatal shootings on the city streets that decade. 

Colorado City bloodshed received enough negative news coverage that the Sept. 1, 1883, edition of El Paso’s Daily Times reported, “We think that Colorado City is somewhat like a great many other western Texas towns—a good place to make money in, but rather a poor one, just yet, to carry a family to and make a home in.”

The violence might have been worse save for a rumored alliance between Sheriff Ware and west end kingpin “Uncle Archie” Johnson. Reportedly at the urging of the town fathers, Ware looked the other way regarding prostitution and illegal gambling, as long as the games remained square and visiting cowboys were not rolled, drugged, robbed, cheated or murdered. In return Johnson and cronies would tip off the law about potential breaches of the peace. 

The arrangement between Ware and Johnson was important. Unlike the Kansas railheads, which cowhands might visit once a year after long drives, Colorado City expected and coveted the regular return business of cowboys. If crime got too far out of hand, ranchers might steer clear of town and trade elsewhere along the T&P. 

One old-timer recounted an 1886 visit to Colorado City with his newly paid pals after their spring roundup. “We were all pretty well-heeled with cash,” he recalled, “but by the next morning there was not enough left in the whole outfit to buy a feed of oats for one of our horses. Old Archie and his gals had gotten it all, but nobody kicked.”

A Wealthy Hub

While Uncle Archie and company were liberating cowhands from their cash, Colorado City merchants and area ranchers also raked in money. For five years after the railroad’s arrival the town boomed, at one point claiming to be the busiest cattle shipping point in the nation. When the newly created Matador Cattle Co. marketed its first herd in 1881, drovers pushed the steers 110 miles south from Motley County to Colorado City. The 12-day drive earned the company an impressive $75 a head. 

While outbound trains shipped cattle, sheep and wool out of Colorado City, inbound trains brought building supplies, ranching materials and consumer wares, which merchants distributed north and west for 200 or more miles. In the northwest corner of the Texas Panhandle the 3-million-acre XIT Ranch—which extended more than 200 miles south from the Oklahoma border in an irregular 30-mile-wide strip—split its purchases between the railhead in Colorado City, to the southeast, and the one in Trinidad, Colo., to the northwest. According to investor Amos Babcock of the Capitol Syndicate, which owned and operated the ranch, it was just over 100 miles from either railhead to the XIT. The distance mattered little. As the bookkeeper of a ranch headquartered 120 miles north of the railhead noted, “We had then to go to Colorado City for almost everything.”

Legendary Texas rancher Charles Goodnight ordered supplies from Colorado City for the 140,000-acre Quitaque Ranch he managed for Cornelia Adair in the Texas Panhandle. One 1882 freight receipt from merchant A.W. Dunn recorded a delivery of 334 spools of barbed wire, six kegs of fencing staples and 38 pieces of lumber. The 33,000-pound load was freighted at a rate of $1 per 100 pounds per 100 miles. Similar commercial transactions plus livestock sales made Colorado City a wealthy community.

Beyond supplying ranches with barbed wire, windmill equipment and necessities, Colorado City also provided emerging communities in west Texas and the South Plains with provisions and the most valuable commodity of all in the largely treeless country—lumber, an absolute essential for pioneers seeking to build homes and businesses and realize their dreams. Pioneering merchant George Singer, whose circa-1881 one-room store in Yellow House Canyon eventually spawned Lubbock, received his merchandise and mail from Colorado City, as did fledgling communities as far away as Tascosa, in the far northwestern corner of the panhandle. 

In January 1883 Colorado City’s boom caught the eye of a St. Louis Globe-Democrat reporter who noted that the town’s business transactions for the prior year “amounted to about $10,000,000,” or more than $300 million in present-day dollars. A tenth of that income, reported the paper, went to town founder Dunn for his aggregate sales in merchandise and cattle. 

The End of an Era

Anticipating a bright future, Colorado City in 1885 hosted a stockman’s ball to celebrate both the town’s prosperity and the opening of the new three-story brick St. James Hotel, complete with indoor plumbing. Cattlemen and their families from throughout Texas and New Mexico Territory attended the celebration. One contemporary young observer said of the ball, “They put the big pot in the little one.”

As impressive and ostentatious as the “pot” may have been, the celebration marked the end of Colorado City’s heyday, not its beginning. Multiple factors contributed to the subsequent rapid economic decline, including droughts, harsh winters, declining cattle prices and competing regional railroads, particularly those extending to Amarillo and San Angelo. Given multiple railheads from which to choose, west Texas ranchers weighed their options as closely as they weighed their steers. As the manager of the Spur Ranch in 1888 explained, “The advantage of a shipping point on the railroad depends not so much on its proximity to the ranch as on the condition of the range between here and there.” 

Over the latter half of the 1880s Colorado City gradually declined in wealth, significance and, mercifully, violence. By 1890 the population had plummeted from its 1884 peak of 6,000 to 1,582, while several of the surrounding communities it had spawned surpassed it with their own rail stops and ambitions. Perhaps if Sheriff Ware and vice king Johnson hadn’t colluded to curb violence, Colorado City might have developed a more flamboyant reputation and ensured its place among the Old West’s famed cattle towns. Or maybe if Colorado City hadn’t been so convenient to the ranches it served—at least compared to Kansas cow towns—it would have birthed a trail herd or cowhand Herodotus to chronicle for posterity its brief time in the sun. Instead, Colorado City flamed out like a west Texas sunset, spectacular in its moment but soon replaced by other, more boisterous cow towns. 

this article first appeared in wild west magazine

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For further reading on this topic author Preston Lewis recommends If I Can Do It Horseback, by John Hendrix; Jeff Milton: A Good Man With a Gun, by J. Evetts Haley; and Lore and Legend: A Compilation of Documents Depicting the History of Colorado City and Mitchell County, compiled by J. Lee Jones Jr. and Nona C. Jones.

There’s no doubt that the fascination with the Wild West lives on today. And for those looking to travel in the footsteps of the region’s storied denizens, writer Mike Bezemek has penned Discovering the Outlaw Trail: Routes, Hideouts, and Stories from the Wild West.

The recently released book is a hybrid of historical storytelling and adventure—part narrative nonfiction and part guide book—with gorgeous photographs to illustrate the iconic stories of the era, including the real-life exploits of Butch Cassidy, Queen Ann Bassett, and the Wild Bunch. Bezemek, a passionate history buff and former kayak and backpacking guide originally from the Bay Area, highlights a variety of activities suited for various levels of accessibility, including hiking, biking, paddling, and driving routes. There are also historic sites, parks, museums, viewpoints, campgrounds, and Old West hotels. In other words, there’s something for everyone. Which is a good thing, because despite the passing of time, collectively, society is still very much fascinated by the idea of the Wild West.

“The Outlaw Trail is a figurative concept. There was a network of routes, and these trails led in and out of the hideouts,” he says. “These weren’t caves; these were regions that were considered to be OK for an outlaw to go.”

Naturally, many of these regions are removed from bustling cities and congested areas, meaning they’re not only historically interesting, but beautiful to explore, even in present time. “These outlaws were living off the grid and debunking societal conventions in a way that popular culture still seems to gravitate towards, as exemplified by the popularity of hidden history and true crime programs,” says Bezemek.

“Even the people in the towns [they terrorized] couldn’t look away,” he says. “The violence and defiance, they’d look at it and think ‘I could never do something like that.’ But man it’s thrilling to think about getting people their comeuppance.”

Here are some of Bezemek’s top spots to explore along the Outlaw Trail in the Western U.S., complete with his descriptions of what makes them a worthy trip.

San Juan Mountains (Colorado)

“In the early 1890s, the San Juan Mountains were booming with mining activity, which served as the backdrop for the earliest exploits of Butch Cassidy and a nascent Wild Bunch. Today, this rugged subrange of the Rocky Mountains is an excellent destination with fascinating history, plenty of outlaw connections, and many awesome adventures. The 235-mile San Juan Skyway follows scenic highways to link up mountain towns and historic sites, like the Old West towns of Telluride, Ouray, Silverton, and Durango. The Telluride of today is a mountain ski town with a national historic landmark district to explore, but in 1889 it was the site of Butch Cassidy’s first robbery. A pair of linked trails allows visitors to walk up the canyon from downtown Telluride to the base of a plummeting waterfall.”

Uinta Basin and Eastern Uinta Mountains (Utah)

“There are plenty of highlights on the Utah side of Dinosaur National Monument [featured in Chapter 6 of Discovering the Outlaw Trail,] from a few short hiking trails with nice scenery that link up around the Split Mountain area to many excellent petroglyph sites throughout the park, including the famous Fremont Culture lizards.

The most popular attraction is the Quarry Exhibit Hall where visitors can view thousands of fossilized dinosaur bones left embedded in the original rock face. There are also two outlaw highlights in the park, one you can drive to and the other requiring a boat. The Josie Bassett Morris cabin is a well-preserved structure located on Cub Creek that was built by the famous Josie Bassett of Browns Park, sister of Queen Ann.”

Grand Staircase and South Lake Powell (Utah/Arizona)

“A massive series of sedimentary rock layers, the Grand Staircase stretches across 100 miles of dramatic landscapes in southwestern Utah. From top to bottom, the staircase starts with plateaus like the Aquarius and Paunsaugunt, where you’ll find Butch Cassidy’s boyhood home. Next, the staircase descends through the hoodoos of Bryce Canyon National Park, the dizzying canyons of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, the sunken slots around the Paria River Canyon, and the sheer cliffs of Lake Powell in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.

The final hurrah is a precipitous drop into Arizona’s Grand Canyon southwest of Lees Ferry. Lees Ferry is a National Park Service unit that is often overlooked by travelers. Originally called Pahreah Crossing, it was once the main crossing on the Colorado River for miles. Many outlaws passed through, aided by ferry operator and fugitive John D. Lee. Here you can find several worthy hikes and a remarkable paddling trip.”

Red Wall Country (Wyoming)

“In the foothills of the southern Bighorn Mountains, Red Wall Country is a stunningly scenic region with plenty of outlaw history worth exploring. The name comes from a series of sheer red sandstone cliffs that extend for more than 25 miles. The outlaw highlight of this region is Hole-in-the-Wall, an infamous and isolated hideout in a small valley eroded into the Red Wall. The best part is the emptiness of the area, and just getting there is an adventure. If you don’t join a tour (options are available in Buffalo and Kaycee), you’ll need a high clearance four-wheel-drive vehicle for the rough clay-dirt road.”

Spurs of the Outlaw Trail (New Mexico)

“In central New Mexico, the roughly 75-mile Billy the Kid Scenic Byway takes in a variety of excellent Old West sites, including the 19^th-century military outpost of Fort Stanton, in Snowy River Cave National Conservation Area. Other stops include the Lincoln Historic Site, with exhibits covering the bloody Lincoln County War and its most famous combatant, Billy the Kid.”

This story originally appeared on Sunset.com.

Discovering the Outlaw Trail

Routes, Hideouts & Stories from the Wild West
by Mike Bezemek, Mountaineer Books, 2023

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On the evening of June 3, 1889, Patrick Cleary grabbed a hatchet from beside the courtroom woodstove and burst outside into the darkness. Some later suggested Sheriff Thomas Boyle had intentionally released his prisoner, believing Cleary stood a better chance of escaping the lynch mob gathered outside than Boyle had of stopping them. Just that morning the sheriff had rescued a juror from a crowd of angry citizens demanding to know why the man had voted to acquit Cleary of murder. Many in the crowd believed Cleary had bribed the man, and some thought the juror himself merited lynching.

Cleary was struck by a bullet as he ran across the courthouse lawn, though it remained unclear whether the shot came from startled guards or angry citizens. Regardless, the vigilantes subsequently captured and lynched the wounded would-be escapee. The history of the Old West is replete with gunfights, jailbreaks, lynchings, murder convictions and even hung juries. But the Cleary case in Lincoln County—the one in Kansas, not the one in New Mexico Territory that witnessed the 1878 Lincoln County War—featured all of those elements in one violent saga. 

The Dispute

Over the years neighboring ranchers and fellow Civil War veterans Patrick “Patsey” Cleary and Jesse Turner had grown to hate one another. In 1888 the bad blood between them, brought to a head in a dispute over watering rights for their cattle herds, finally erupted. Cleary was in his mid-40s, Turner about 60. They had grown their herds to 300 head and 100 head, respectively.

On January 2 Cleary happened across Turner’s 12-year-old son, Charles, and 15-year-old son, Isaiah, tending the family herd at a watering place on the west branch of Elkhorn Creek. Cleary told the boys to inform their father that he’d recently bought the watering and grazing rights to the site, and that the Turners’ cattle were no longer welcome there. When Turner joined his sons at the watering place that afternoon, they gave him Cleary’s message. It ran counter to Turner’s earlier understanding from Charley Jones, who lived on 80 acres adjoining the watering place. So, Jesse again confirmed with Jones that the Turners were, in fact, welcome to water their cattle on the creek. Given his stormy history with Cleary, Turner resolved to borrow a pistol for his own protection.

Later that day Cleary ranch hand John Demming rode out to the Turner ranch to deliver a note warning Jesse to keep his cattle away from the watering place:

“Jesse Turner—Dear Sir: You are hereby notified not to trespass on sec. nine where your cattle watered and fed yesterday and today, as I have bought the right of grass and water on the place and need it for my own cattle. I will not have them there, and you will oblige me by keeping them off.
Respectfully yours, Pat. Cleary”

Jesse wasn’t home, so Demming left the note with Turner employee Arthur White, who happened to be loading a cap-and-ball revolver at the time. Another revolver lay in plain view on a table. When Demming reported back to his boss, Cleary concluded the Turners were set to kill him should he try to prevent them from watering their cattle.

Meanwhile, Turner had visited neighbor John W. Jaycox, a few miles south in Ellsworth County, to discuss the situation and borrow a pistol. As he had no other watering place for his cattle, Turner explained to his neighbor, he had no choice but to water his cattle on the Elkhorn the next day, Cleary’s warning be damned. Jaycox, who’d had his own run-ins with Cleary, loaned Turner a loaded revolver. 

On arriving home, Turner read Cleary’s note—the second “don’t trespass” warning of the day—and told son Charles nothing had changed. They simply couldn’t deny their cattle water.

Like Turner, Cleary also made preparations for a potentially violent showdown over the watering place. The next morning, January 3, he visited neighbor Wellington J. Mills, also from Ellsworth County, and borrowed a revolver to supplement one he’d already borrowed from relative George Beggs. On arriving home, Cleary made bullets, pocketed one of his revolvers and went to feed his cattle from a corncrib near his farmhouse. 

Around 9 a.m. Turner reined in his horse on the road beside the Cleary place and called for Pat to show himself. Cleary obliged and walked to within a few yards of where Turner sat his horse, armed with his borrowed revolver. Cleary’s 16-year-old son, John, looked on from the farmyard.

“What are you going to do about that watering place?” Turner asked.

“I don’t propose to let you water there,” Cleary replied. “I have bought the ground and the privilege of the watering place myself, and I need it for my own cattle.” 

Turner then told his combative neighbor that he planned to water his cattle on the creek, and Cleary could not stop him. 

“We’ll see about that,” retorted Cleary.

After a further exchange of insults, Turner raised a club and hollered, “You son of a bitch, I will kill you now!”

When Turner’s horse stepped closer, Cleary jumped back and yelled, “God damn you, don’t you hit me with that club!” 

Turner promptly laid down the club on his saddle pommel. But then he yanked the mitten from his right hand and grabbed for his revolver. Cleary also drew his. According to Cleary and son John (the only other surviving eyewitness), Turner triggered his revolver, which misfired, and was aiming a second time when Pat shot him once over the left eye. Turner died instantly. When a township constable arrived on scene, Cleary turned over his revolver and surrendered, claiming self-defense. 

The Murder Trial

Once news of the fatal shooting reached the county seat at Lincoln (population 1,000), local newspapers broke the explosive story. The Lincoln Beacon disclosed that more than a decade earlier Cleary had shot and severely wounded neighbor John Lyden. The paper also tied together two related events that put Cleary in a bad light—Cleary’s alleged attempt to murder Jaycox for having testified against him in a prior case, and Cleary’s fatal shooting of Turner, who had testified against Cleary in the same case. “One of the five men [Cleary] threatened has been disposed of and an attempt made upon the second,” wrote the paper, “and others feel that it may only be a question of time when others go the way of Turner.” The paper also quoted a reported threat from Cleary to act on his grudge against those men living along Elkhorn Creek: “I will ride a horse and leave a bloody trail along the Elkhorn Valley so that my name will be handed down to future generations as the bloody desperado Pat Cleary.” 

Five weeks after the Turner killing jury selection began in Cleary’s murder trial at the Lincoln County Courthouse. Three attorneys prosecuted Cleary, and four defended him. Among Cleary’s defense team was fellow Civil War veteran Jeremiah G. Mohler. In 1879 Mohler had earned notoriety for having successfully obtained the dismissal of multiple first-degree murder charges against six Northern Cheyennes. The killings had been committed in western Kansas amid their band’s headline-grabbing flight from a reservation in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) to their northern homelands. 

The prosecution presented as evidence Cleary’s pretrial statements, son John’s testimony about the shooting and the testimony of Jaycox, who related how Cleary had earlier tried to kill him. Other prosecution witnesses testified about threats Cleary had made over the years against Turner, Jaycox and other locals. Their statements elaborated on the Beacon’s reference to the five men who had testified against Cleary in another case, Cleary’s threat to kill them and his “bloody desperado” boast.

A half-dozen prosecution witnesses spoke to Turner’s character, testifying that he’d been a peaceable fellow. Several defense witnesses contradicted their claims, insisting Turner had a reputation for being quarrelsome and had gone about armed on prior occasions. One witness testified that he’d been standing outside a community dance held the previous autumn when he spotted a revolver-shaped bulge in Turner’s coat pocket. When asked why he was carrying a gun, Turner reportedly answered, “I calculate to kill Mr. Patsey Cleary with that if I can.”

On February 21, having heard six days of testimony and opposing arguments, the jury rejected Cleary’s self-defense claim and convicted him of second-degree murder. Judge Sampson O. Hinds sentenced him to 20 years of hard labor in the Kansas State Penitentiary. So it seemed those Lincoln County residents who’d been threatened by the self-proclaimed desperado could rest easy under the reasonable expectation Cleary would die in prison or at least age to the point of infirmity. Or could they? 

Attorney Mohler immediately filed an appeal with the Kansas Supreme Court. Among his arguments was an allegation that juror Oscar Gorten had provided false or misleading answers during the jury selection process to hide his prejudice against Cleary. As proof, Mohler submitted affidavits from two men swearing that the morning after the killing Gorten had told them Cleary was a bad, desperate man and should be hanged to save the county further expense.

During its July term the Supreme Court accepted Mohler’s argument, reversed Cleary’s second-degree murder conviction and sent the case back to Lincoln County. 

Returned to Lincoln for retrial, Cleary was again defended by the same four attorneys, with three attorneys arguing for the prosecution. Much of the testimony of the 70 witnesses at the retrial mirrored that given in the original trial. Claims that an unfair or partial juror had been seated would also resurface in the retrial—only this time the juror was allegedly biased for Cleary.

The trial began on May 16, 1889, the jury receiving the case late in the afternoon on Wednesday, May 29. For four days straight jury foreman John P. Harmon reported to the court that jurors were unable to agree. They kept at it, but as deliberations ground on, townspeople’s concerns turned into indignation. 

By Sunday many believed that bribery of a juror or jurors had tilted the scales of justice toward Cleary. More alarming to authorities were openly expressed threats to lynch the accused. They responded with a declaration “to meet with firearms any attempt at violence” and placed an extra guard over Cleary. Concerned such threats might unduly influence the jury, they added two more bailiffs to protect jurors while they deliberated.

Early the next morning—Monday, June 3—the jury remained hung after its eighth ballot, and Judge William G. Eastland discharged it from duty. Within a half hour Cleary, seemingly unwilling to press his luck with yet another trial, pleaded guilty to the substantially reduced charge of third- degree manslaughter. Judge Eastland handed him the maximum allowable sentence of three years’ confinement at hard labor.

The mob gathers

The citizens of Lincoln were in disbelief. After all, the first jury had convicted Cleary of murder. How could the second jury have hung after hearing the same basic facts from virtually the same witnesses?

An explanation presented itself soon after the jury’s discharge when jurors volunteered that foreman Harmon—the former county superintendent of schools—had been the sole holdout for acquittal. Many citizens (and some jurors) drew the conclusion Harmon had lied about his “fairness and impartiality” during jury selection so he could get on the jury and hang it. His motive? Money.

As the rumor spread, townspeople’s unhappiness turned into full-blown anger at foreman Harmon. The morning of the jury’s discharge a mob of angry men confronted Harmon on the street, demanding to know why the foreman had hung the jury. That’s when Boyle stepped in. For Harmon’s safety, the sheriff took the foreman to the courthouse, where Cleary was also being held.

The fury of the crowd rapidly spread, and by midafternoon several hundred men had gathered outside the courthouse. Hollering up from the street, they again demanded Harmon explain why he hung the jury.Through a courthouse window he insisted that no one had offered him a bribe, and that he’d relied only on the evidence. Although the crowd jeered in disbelief, it eventually drifted away. But its dispersal was only the quiet before the storm.

Men continued to pour into town from throughout Lincoln County and neighboring Ellsworth County, swelling the population as well as the rumors. The bribery claim mixed with snippets of testimony recalled by those who had packed the courthouse during the trial. Particularly memorable were Cleary’s threats to kill men for having
testified against him in a prior trial and his intention to be remembered as a bloody desperado. Those threatened had good reason to fear Cleary would do just as he’d promised after serving his three-year term.

Come nightfall foreman Harmon managed to slip out the back of the courthouse. Had he remained, the Salina Daily Gazette later observed, he “would have gone by the rope route in company with the murderer, as the people seemed determined to avenge the murder of old man Turner.”

Around 9:30 p.m. Cleary, having watched Harmon slip away unnoticed, attempted his own escape. It looked promising at first. He made it outside with hatchet in hand and sprinted across the courthouse square. It is possible Sheriff Boyle released the convicted prisoner in an effort to spare him from a lynching. Others have suggested his escape from custody was legitimate. Regardless, he didn’t get far. As Cleary literally ran for his life, a bullet fired by an unknown assailant caught him in the left side, dropping him to the ground. Moments later a mob of 300 to 400 men materialized to seize Cleary.

The vigilantes dragged the wounded man to the Fourth Street railroad bridge, on the southern outskirts of Lincoln. During his terrifying half-mile journey Cleary confessed to having slain three men and attempted to kill two others. But each was done in self-defense, he insisted. Cleary, the Lincoln Beacon reported, “was stubbornly obdurate and claimed justification for all violent acts he had ever taken part in.” Ignoring their captive’s pleas, the mob cinched a rope around Cleary’s neck and unceremoniously hurled him off the west side of the bridge. His body was left hanging there until morning. 

Aftermath

In the immediate wake of the lynching newspapers proffered several justifications for the mob’s actions. Some reprinted the pretrial stories about Cleary’s bad character and earlier misdeeds. Others ran new stories speaking to his bad intent. For example, George Beggs, the relative who’d loaned Cleary a revolver a few days before the gunfight, claimed Patsey had first tried to “lie him” into killing Turner. When Beggs refused, Cleary replied, “Then I will do it myself.” And he did. Beggs was certain his relative had committed cold-blooded murder.

“Accounts are rife of murders alleged to have been committed by the late Patsey Cleary” the Lincoln Beacon reported. One such murder cited by the Beacon and the other two local papers—the Lincoln County Democrat and Lincoln Republican—was “the wanton killing of a Negro at Fort Smith, Ark., during the war,” purportedly after the man had “[taken] up too much of the sidewalk.” Cleary also allegedly killed brother-in-law Cornelius Deits and a man in Colorado. According to the Lincoln papers, Cleary also shot a man in Arizona and “is known to have shot and wounded three men in this county at different times.” Back in 1869 other Kansas newspapers had reported that at a store on Elkhorn Creek he’d shot and wounded four men. Three of the victims—George Green, Henry Tucker and John Lyden—had served as Forsyth Scouts and fought Cheyennes the previous September at the Battle of Beecher Island in Colorado Territory. After that “shooting affray,” the Daily Kansas Tribune had opined, “the prospects were that [Cleary] would be lynched if caught.” Its prediction had been 20 years premature. 

Based on the old and new accounts, as well as the events testified to at trial, the Lincoln Beacon concluded Cleary unquestionably “was a vicious and dangerous ‘badman’…[whose] highest ambition seemed to be to be regarded as a ‘terror.’”

The Lincoln Republican went so far as to opine that the occasional lynching might actually prove beneficial. “A few injudicial hangings have a good effect frequently,” it wrote, “in Kansas as well as in communities that claim a higher civilization than we.”

In contrast to such justifications for extralegal execution are the views of a formidable man who like Cleary, Turner and many others in the Lincoln and Ellsworth area raised cattle out West in the 1880s. Fourteen years after the Cleary lynching none other than “Cowboy President” Theodore Roosevelt spoke to Congress from his bully pulpit. “No man is above the law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man’s permission when we require him to obey it,” he said. “Obedience to the law is demanded as a right; not asked as a favor.” Such sentiments help explain why Roosevelt was later immortalized in the Black Hills of South Dakota, his visage carved 60 feet high in the enduring granite.  

Lawton R. Nuss is an honorary marshal of Dodge City, a frequent judge in cowboy poetry contests and the retired chief justice of the Kansas Supreme Court. This article is a modified version of one published in the July/August 2021 issue of The Journal of the Kansas Bar Association. Sources for both articles include period newspapers and court records.

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On the morning of June 19, 1841, the Santa Fe Pioneers were ready to depart Kenney’s Fort, an outpost on the banks of Brushy Creek, north of Austin, the new capital of the Republic of Texas. After a review and address by Mirabeau B. Lamar, the republic’s second president, a convoy of 24 ox-drawn wagons, 321 men, a herd of beef cattle, a 6-pounder brass field gun and about $200,000 in trade goods headed toward the wilds of northwest Texas, bound for Santa Fe.

Organized at Lamar’s direction, the expedition was charged with opening trade with Santa Fe, a growing commercial center controlled by Mexico. The trip also was designed to cement Texas’ claim to a large swath of territory east of the Rio Grande, including Santa Fe, with expedition leaders instructed to invite (but not try to compel) New Mexicans to join the republic. Lamar hoped the Texan Santa Fe Expedition, as it’s known today, would be the first step toward establishing an empire that would stretch to the Pacific Ocean.

It was not.

The expedition failed miserably. Poorly planned and led, it fell apart bit by bit as it crossed the wilderness. Men were killed in Indian attacks and spent much of the journey near starvation. The column lost most of its livestock, supplies and wagons. Survivors were readily captured by Mexican troops, sent on a forced march and imprisoned in Mexico. Perhaps 60 members of the group died, deserted or simply vanished during the 3,000-mile odyssey.

Lamar was strongly criticized for the debacle, his republic’s Congress even pondering impeachment. Yet the expedition generated renewed interest in Texas by the United States, accelerating its annexation and leading to a war that greatly increased the nation’s size, wealth and power and established the borders of the present-day state of Texas.

Born in Georgia in 1798, Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar was a man of culture. An accomplished horseman and fencer (with swords, not barbed wire), he also painted, wrote poetry and read widely. He served as secretary to Georgia’s governor, was elected to the state senate and founded a newspaper. In 1834, though, after the death of his wife and two failed runs for Congress, he decided to move to Texas.

In April 1836, at the Battle of San Jacinto, the final clash of the Texas Revolution, his quick action saved a group of soldiers surrounded by Mexican forces, earning him a promotion to colonel and leadership of the cavalry. After the revolution he became secretary of war, then was elected vice president, serving with President Sam Houston, the hero of San Jacinto.

Lamar soon broke with Houston, however, over the president’s conciliatory approach to the bellicose Cherokees and Comanches. Texas’ Constitution prohibited Houston from serving consecutive terms, and Lamar succeeded him as president, taking office in December 1838.

A strong proponent of education, the cultivated Lamar convinced Texas’ Congress to set aside public lands for schools and two universities. On the other hand, he ordered troops to drive Indians from the frontier, alienating previously friendly tribes and stirring up more violence. Partly to expand the republic’s territory and partly to needle Houston, he convinced Congress to establish a new capital on the frontier, far from the existing capital named after Houston. Lamar’s term was also punctuated by run-ins with Mexico.

His policies were costly, and public debt soared. So, the republic printed paper money worth little at first and almost nothing later on. Texas needed cash and lots of it. Lamar saw the expedition as a way to tap into the lucrative trade between Santa Fe and its partners and to convince its merchants to use Texas ports.

The president also hoped to solidify the republic’s claim to New Mexico. When captured at San Jacinto, Mexican President Antonio López de Santa Anna had ceded much of the territory by treaty. Texas’ Congress formally claimed the land in late 1836, but the republic hadn’t yet tried to enforce the claim.

Lamar asked Congress to authorize the expedition in 1840, and both houses seemed amenable. Lamar left the country for health reasons late that year, though, and by the time he returned, Congressman Houston had torpedoed the idea.

Undaunted, Lamar pressed on. He had reason to believe a delegation would receive a warm welcome in Santa Fe. Several trusted men who’d spent time there advised him that its people were disgruntled with Mexican rule and their governor, Manuel Armijo.

That spring Lamar had written an open letter to the people of Santa Fe, inviting them to join the Texas cause. “We shall take great pleasure in hailing you as fellow citizens,” he wrote, “members of our young republic and co-aspirants with us for all the glory of establishing a new and happy and free nation.”

Lamar appointed commissioners to carry greetings to Santa Fe and, if possible, assume control of the territory. He authorized a volunteer military force (Texas’ Congress having disbanded the republic’s army) and recruited merchants eager to ply their wares.

Lamar appointed William Gordon Cooke senior commissioner and commander of the expedition. The Virginia native had trained in the family pharmacy business before moving to New Orleans, where he joined other American volunteers off to fight in the Texas Revolution. He joined the Texas army in 1836 and at San Jacinto prevented worked-up troops from executing Santa Anna. Cooke later helped lay out roads, fought Indians, explored and mapped much of north-central Texas, and established a fort around which sprouted up Dallas.

Another commissioner was José Antonio Navarro, a Tejano—a Texan (or Texian) of Hispanic descent. He’d fought for Mexican independence but felt the Anglo-American settlers provided a better chance to develop Texas, so he sided with the revolutionaries. A signatory of Texas’ Declaration of Independence, he helped draft the republic’s constitution, was elected to its Congress and supported Lamar. He also fought for the rights of fellow Tejanos, many of whom were mistreated by Anglo settlers. Navarro would suffer more than any other member of the expedition, narrowly avoiding execution and spending more than two years in a squalid prison.

“Great troubles and sufferings”

The expedition was imperiled almost from the moment it left Kenney’s Fort. Its departure had been delayed more than a month, so the men would cross Texas at the hottest, driest time of the year. The convoy carried limited food and within days of departure had to send for more cattle. “The supply of cornmeal for bread hardly lasted over two weeks, flour or crackers we were not furnished, coffee we had only for about a month and not even salt enough
to last more than two months,” recalled 18-year-old German volunteer Cayton Erhard. Oddly, no one knew exactly where they were going, how great a distance they would cover or the obstacles they would encounter. 

Even so, the journey began smoothly enough. The expedition crossed prairies, camped along creeks and rivers, dined on the abundant bison and other game, and avoided confrontations with Indians. A month into the trip, though, its luck began to turn.

“After we reached the Cross Timbers [woodlands in central Texas], then our main troubles commenced,” Erhard wrote. “In fact we were lost. Great difficulties presented themselves for advance by a rough, broken country and great scarcity of water and provisions.…We were still about 500 miles distant from Santa Fe…a very unpleasant contemplation when we had nothing to live on but poor oxen, little game and great risk of life to hunt that, on account of hostile Indians.” A popular phrase among the men was, “I’ve seen the elephant—I’ve had enough!”

Reaching what they thought was the Red River, they turned west toward New Mexico. But they were in error. The river was the Wichita, 75 miles south of the Red. “Here commenced our great troubles and sufferings,” Erhard wrote.

The expedition forged paths through dense woods, encountered uncrossable gullies and at times endured a day or more without water. On August 13, while encamped in tall grass at the edge of a ravine, a fire broke out. “The flames spread with wonderful rapidity, and in a few moments two of our wagons were on fire, one of the tents was burnt up, and the other wagons were barely saved,” recalled expedition member Thomas Falconer, a British jurist and adventurer, in an 1843 paper for Britain’s Royal Geographical Society.

On August 30 Kiowas attacked a Texan scouting party, killing five men, then stripping and mutilating their bodies. One had his heart cut out. By then, the expedition’s supplies were exhausted. Daily beef rations were cut to a pound and a half per man, bones included, and they butchered the horses killed in the Kiowa attack. The combination of long marches, little water and poor food “had combined to weaken and dispirit the men, render them impatient of control and inclined to disobey all orders,” wrote merchant George W. Kendall in his Narrative of the Texan Santa Fe Expedition, the most extensive history of the enterprise written by one of its members.

The expedition’s appointed military commander, 27-year-old Brig. Gen. Hugh McLeod, had only managed to exacerbate the column’s troubles. Born in New York City and raised in Georgia, McLeod graduated from West Point, last in a class of 56. Later resigning his commission to join the new Republic of Texas, he became a general, both fought against and negotiated with Indians, and studied and practiced law.

McLeod’s command began meekly, as he fell ill soon after departure and had to return to civilization to recuperate. He was away from the party for two weeks, slowing its progress. He earned little respect as a commander, often requiring the independent-minded volunteers to drill. One officer resigned, and several men deserted. On August 31, with time and options running out, McLeod dispatched a vanguard of nearly 100 men, commanded by Commissioner Cooke, accompanied by troops under Captain John S. Sutton and equipped with most of the remaining horses and a few days’ food rations, to seek help in Santa Fe—still 300 miles away.

An Act of Betrayal

September 17 was a pivotal day for the expedition, one demonstrating that the assurances Lamar had received of a warm welcome in New Mexico had been startlingly wrong.

Mexico had deposed Santa Anna after his loss to Texas, and its Congress had refused to ratify the treaty he’d signed ceding control of New Mexico. After the Santa Fe Pioneers set out, Santa Anna had returned to office, and he regarded the expedition as an attack on Mexico’s sovereignty.

New Mexico Governor Armijo had long been preparing for a Texas incursion, petitioning Mexico City for more money and troops to protect his domain. He alerted his citizens to the potential threat and offered rewards to anyone warning of an enemy approach.

The New Mexican frontier was much farther than expected, and by the 17th Cooke’s vanguard had traveled more than two weeks instead of the expected few days. The group sustained itself by devouring “every tortoise and snake, every living and creeping thing…with a rapacity that nothing but the direst hunger could induce,” Kendall recalled. A desperate Cooke had dispatched three scouts on September 4 and five more on September 14. Both groups were captured by Mexican troops under Captain Damasio Salazar. On the 17th the second group watched helplessly as a firing squad shot two members of the first group in the back. A third Texan was killed after an escape attempt.

The rest of the vanguard surrendered that same day, thanks to an act of betrayal. As the second group of scouts was being marched toward Santa Fe, it encountered Armijo, who was leading a large force to intercept the Texans. He asked for an interpreter from among the Texans, and Captain William Lewis, who had spent time in Santa Fe, volunteered. Armijo sent him back to Cooke with a message.

Lewis was captain of the artillery and appears to have served honorably during the long journey. On September 17, however, he warned Cooke that Armijo was approaching with thousands of troops (the governor’s command was much smaller than that, though still larger and in better shape than that of the exhausted Texans). Lewis conveyed Armijo’s promise that if the Texans disarmed, they would be escorted to Santa Fe, where they could conduct their trade and return home safely. Lewis and Cooke were fellow Masons, and Lewis swore a Masonic oath that Armijo’s assurances were honest and true.

They weren’t.

On catching up with Cooke’s main column, Salazar’s men took the Texans’ arms, trade goods, blankets, money, even their coats, then bound them for the march to Santa Fe.

Some contemporaries suggested Lewis knew resistance was futile and was merely trying to save his comrades. Others said he was tricked by the New Mexicans. Most, however, thought he’d sold out, betraying his fellow Texans for his own life and a share of the expedition’s goods. Regardless, Lewis was later ostracized in both Mexico and the United States. His ultimate fate remains uncertain.

A few days prior to its capture the vanguard had encountered friendly New Mexicans who assured them villages were close by. Cooke sent messengers with the promising report back to McLeod at what the Texans called Camp Resolution, northeast of present-day Lubbock.

McLeod and party had spent a miserable couple of weeks there. At least 13 men had died of disease or in Indian attacks, and supplies were exhausted, the men having resorted to eating roasted or boiled hides from slaughtered animals. On September 15 Peter Gallagher, a 29-year-old Irish stonemason and merchant, recorded the state of things in his journal (the only diary to survive the trip): “Much discontent. The men wish to burn everything and return home. I never suffered so much in mind in my life.”

Cooke’s messengers arrived in camp on September 17, and McLeod followed them back to New Mexico. On October 4 he camped near present-day Tucumcari, there encountering forces under Colonel Juan Andrés Archuleta.

McLeod was oblivious to the fate of Cooke’s party, and his own group could muster only about 90 able-bodied men. So, on written assurances of fair treatment from Archuleta, he ordered his men to yield their arms. With that, the entire Santa Fe Expedition had surrendered without firing a single shot.

The Brutal Journey South

Archuleta escorted McLeod’s party to Armijo’s camp, where, stripped of their coats and all but a single blanket apiece, the Texans were bound together in groups. Armijo then convened a council of officers to consider their fate. “It was expected that all our men would be shot,” Erhard wrote. The council instead voted for imprisonment, and the group started on its long march south to Mexico City.

The Cooke and McLeod parties trudged into Mexico separately. McLeod’s group endured an especially brutal journey under Salazar, as recorded in Noel M. Loomis’ 1958 book The Texan–Santa Fe Pioneers. The captain scarcely fed the Texans, who were forced to march 30 or more miles a day on feet that were alternately blistered, bleeding and frostbitten. After one Texan died in his sleep, Salazar had his ears cut off as evidence for superiors the man hadn’t deserted. When another Texan with bad ankles refused to walk, Salazar summarily shot him and had his ears severed and preserved. Their only relief came when local women gave them food and water as they passed through pueblos and villages.

On October 30 the convoy entered the notorious Jornada del Muerto (“Journey of the Dead Man”) desert, a bone-dry, 90-mile stretch of sand, volcanic rock and thorny vegetation. Across this forbidding landscape Salazar force-marched the group overnight, providing no water and stopping only briefly to rest his horses. One Texan too weak to continue was smashed in the face with a musket and died, while another was shot.

The suffering didn’t end till they reached El Paso del Norte on November 4. “The greater number of the men were broken down by lameness and fatigue,” Falconer wrote. “Many were almost naked, and others were suffering from sickness. Immediately on their arrival everything in the power of the commandant, Colonel D. José María Elías, was done to relieve them, and assurances were given of their personal safety.”

After a few days’ rest the prisoners resumed their trek to Mexico City, where they arrived in early February 1842 and were dispersed among various prisons and asylums, including one for lepers. Some were later released, others escaped and some were abused. Finally, on June 13 Santa Anna declared an amnesty (except for Navarro, who was held in a notorious prison for 14 months before escaping). Each expedition member made his own way back to Texas.

Consequences for Lamar

The Texan Santa Fe Expedition had failed—dramatically and disastrously. Yet it would also prove disastrous for Mexico. Long before the expedition reached Mexico City, news of the men’s capture raced across Texas and the nation. Newspapers from New York to Atlanta published regular updates.

Meanwhile, Lamar had to answer to his own republic. He tried to justify his actions in a message to Texas’ Congress on Nov. 3, 1841, writing that he believed the expedition “would do more towards reviving the drooping energies of the nation, enriching the people and relieving the government from its embarrassments, than all the financial theories and speculations which may be devised for a quarter of a century to come.”

Congress wasn’t mollified, however. That December 6, with Sam Houston already in Austin to be sworn in for his second term as president, a committee recommended the House of Representatives consider articles of impeachment against Lamar and his vice president and secretary of war, noting that Congress had authorized neither the expedition nor funding for it. “His Excellency the President, in fitting up and sending out the Santa Fe Expedition, has acted without the authority of law or the sanction of reason,” the committee wrote in a draft resolution. “The reasons assigned by the president are strange, unnatural and unsatisfactory, and…the course pursued by his Excellency meets the disapprobation of Congress.”

Congress didn’t act on the recommendation, however, and Lamar retired to Richmond, Texas (though he fought with the U.S. Army during the subsequent Mexican War). Until his death at age 61 in 1859 he traveled, wrote poetry, remarried and campaigned in support of slavery.

The United States annexed Texas on Dec. 29, 1845, ending Lamar’s dream of empire. By then national opinion had turned strongly against Mexico, and shortly after Texas joined the Union, the United States declared war. Its victory stripped Mexico not only of Texas, but also of New Mexico and California. Yet Texas kept most of what it had already claimed, extending its boundaries far beyond its frontier and establishing the familiar outline it maintains today. 

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For further reading on this topic author Damond Benningfield recommends Narrative of the Texan Santa Fe Expedition, by George W. Kendall; The Texan–Santa Fe Pioneers, by Noel M. Loomis; and Journals of the Sixth Congress of the Republic of Texas, 1841–1842.

The romance of ranching is a myth. The reality of ranching is work. The people who live and work Wyoming’s ranchlands, no matter the location, are a hardy breed. When it is snowing and the wind is blowing—winter conditions common throughout the “Cowboy State”—they simply don a few more layers of clothing before venturing out to tend livestock, forking hay to cattle and seldom begrudging passing deer or elk from also eating a mouthful or two. 

Photographs from Ranchland: Wagonhound, by Anouk Masson Krantz, The Images Publishing Group, 2022.

Historical photographs appear alongside Krantz’s images below, showing Wyoming ranch life then and now.

Ranchers might dub a major weather front a “million-dollar storm,” referring to the costs it wrings in lost crops or livestock. Perhaps it’s a storm that deposits more than a foot of heavy, water-laden snow on crop and pastureland just when grass needs to start growing, or one that drops snow deep in the fall or during calving season, weakening and killing newborn animals. Ranchers perpetually worry about the weather they cannot control, and about the animals they tend and depend on for a living.

Ranch work is often generational. Many of the men and women riding for such big ranches as Wagonhound—the 300,000-acre spread outside Douglas, Wyo., depicted on the following pages—learned their craft riding alongside their fathers or mothers and sometimes grandparents. Many then share the work and lifestyle with their own children and grandchildren. The best hands care for the land and stock as if they owned them. They do the work with excellence because they love the land and ride for a brand.

A French-born photographer from New York may seem an unlikely person to document life on a Wyoming ranch, and Anouk Krantz admits she initially came to Wagonhound with little understanding of what she saw through the viewfinder. “All my knowledge about the cowboy around this Western way of life were all sort of misconceptions,” she came to realize. “Once I put my foot through the door, I realized this culture wasn’t dying, but was very much still alive.” Wyoming’s wide-open ranchlands, “the power of nature, these amazing landscapes,” proved her inspiration.

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

It took photographer Krantz most of a day to fly from her hometown of New York City to Denver and then to drive north to the Wagonhound in east-central Wyoming, which she deems “one of the most isolated, remote places in the country.” The familiar welcome she received is akin to that captured in her image above of a group of riders returning to waiting fellow hands at the ranch bunkhouse. Anouk’s connection to Wagonhound “started with one piece of paper with one phone number of one rancher in Texas. He introduced me to his friends, and they introduced me to their friends.” Though a stranger to ranch life, she soon found a “connection with this land, freedom, independence.” Wagonhound headquarters is about an hour west of Douglas in the midst of an isolated landscape “like the wilderness.”

Come and Get It

Though a ranch’s mobile kitchen may be better equipped today than when the cowboys at left in Rawlins, Wyo., spread out behind their waiting chuck wagon, eating grub from a tin plate is a ritual that carries over from the 1870s–’80s heyday of open range trail drives. “Cookie” is still expected to dish out hot meals on time for busy cowboys to eat while spread out on the ground, their horses at the ready. Anouk soon earned their respect when she proved willing to follow them at all hours. “When you are thinking about what these people are doing from dark to dark,” she says, “they are caring for their herds, but they have to do it within their surroundings. I wanted to bring that into my pictures.”

Riding for the Brand

A cowhand’s tasks—corralling, roping, castrating, branding—haven’t changed much from time of the 1890s Wyoming roundup captured below. Neither has the clothing or gear. A hand doesn’t choose clothing based on style but practicality. You’ll never see cowboys at a branding wearing short sleeves. Likewise, they’ll have on sturdy jeans, work boots and, more so today, a pair of leather chaps like those above to protect their legs from kicking calves, rope burns and the stray hot branding iron. Hat styles have become more of an individual choice, but wide brims remain necessary to shield one from the sun or keep rain from running down one’s neck. 

In Wyoming, by the way, the term “cowboy” is gender neutral, as applicable to the women and girls as the men and boys who ride, rope and work cattle. That said, on the Wagonhound most ranch wives work as teachers or nurses in town. They may throw in a hand at brandings, but the daily operations are mostly men’s work. The two years Anouk spent at the Wagonhound allowed her to follow these busy men and women as they gathered and branded and otherwise did their daily chores. “I was able learn how they run a ranch, how hard they work, how much it takes to do all this,” she says. “And their deep affection and love for the land, for the animals, the cows, the calves, their dogs and their horses. It all works together in such a harmony.”

Follow the Wagon Ruts

The ranch itself inspired every photograph in the book. “It’s the scale of the land, the sky, the air we breathe and mother nature,” Anouk says. “The land came first, and then we came. To me it’s very important. I think that is what still inspires people from around the world to connect with the American Western landscape.” In the 1800s hundreds of thousands of emigrants drove and followed covered wagons across these foothills along the Oregon, California and Mormon trails. The ranchers who staked claims after approval of the 1862 Homestead Act and the cattleman who trailed the first herds north from Texas into Wyoming also used wagons to haul food and supplies. Wagonhound’s true expanse is revealed above, as pickups and horse trailers crossing the ranch in line seem like child’s toys. 

Learning the Ropes

Ranch life is multigenerational. Often a roundup or branding crew includes grandma and grandpa, mom and dad, sons and daughters, all riding and working side by side. Little ones might ride saddles their own parents used when they were small. The best babysitter on a ranch remains a steady, older horse named Dunny or Brownie or even Sweet Pea. The best such horses can be depended on to be gentle around kids but still able to manage quarrelsome steers. If a kid doesn’t know how to push cows down a trail or out of brush, but the horse does, then that’s a partnership that will get the job done. When adults involve their children in the chores—the kids usually consider it fun—they are not only passing on a legacy, but also instilling a work ethic and an appreciation for stewardship of the land, work animals and livestock. Among Anouk’s revelations as she photographed the Wagonhound were how hard people work and how they work together as a community with their families and neighbors. But her biggest discovery was how much they truly cared for the land. “How they use pasture rotation, a wonderful way to let the earth breathe, rest,” she says. “What they are doing for our earth is unknown to most people.” 

Candy Moulton, executive director of the Wyoming Cowboy Hall of Fame, was reared on her grandparent’s homestead near Encampment, Wyo.

Photographer Anouk Masson Krantz’s book, Ranchland: Wagonhound, received the 2023 Western Heritage Award for best art/photography book from National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.

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George Carmack strutted into Bill McPhee’s smoke-filled saloon in the settlement of Forty Mile, Canada, at the confluence of the Fortymile and Yukon rivers. Days earlier, on Aug. 16, 1896, Carmack and his Tagish brother-in-law, Keish (aka “Skookum Jim” Mason), and nephew Káa Goox (aka “Dawson Charlie”) had found gold far to the east on Rabbit Creek, a tributary of the Klondike River. Carmack ordered a round of drinks for the house, shouting, “There’s been a big strike upriver!” Few of the bar patrons paid much mind. After all, it was “Lying George” doing the talking. But the gold nuggets the excited prospector slapped down to pay for the drinks did catch their attention.

These “Sourdoughs,” so named for the fermented dough they used to make everything from bread to flapjacks, were a unique breed. They drifted north by ones and twos when most Americans were heading west to the Pacific. They liked to claim they were prospectors, but only a few actually found gold.

They were also extremely eccentric. Four partners kept a moose in their cabin as a pet. Others, like Frank Buteau, rigged up sails to propel their sleds—in Buteau’s case because he couldn’t afford dogs. Another hardy, albeit penniless, soul was rumored to have fashioned dental plates for his fronts from tin spoons and teeth pulled from the skulls of a mountain sheep, a wolf and a bear he’d shot. With typical Sourdough gusto he then stewed and ate the bear with its own teeth.

These adventurers barely peppered the vast region. The 1890 federal census recorded only 31,795 residents (including 4,303 whites and 23,274 Native Alaskans) in the adjacent 663,000-square-mile District of Alaska, whose governor was appointed by the president of the United States. Little more than 2,000 souls dwelled along the banks of the 1,980-mile-long Yukon River itself, which flows westward through Canada’s Yukon Territory and Alaska to the Bering Sea.

As soon as Carmack left the bar, or perhaps before, bystanders inquired at the recorder’s office about the location of Carmack’s claim. Time was ripe for a major strike; the value of gold shipments from the Yukon had increased from $30,000 in 1887 to $800,000 in 1896. Within days some 1,500 Sourdoughs descended on the Klondike River, just upstream from where it empties into the Yukon. Taking its name from the river, the gold-bearing region of central Yukon Territory became known as the Klondike. Through the bitter winter months of 1896–97 each prospector worked his solitary claim, having scant communication with the outside world.

With the spring ice breakup hundreds of miners rafted down the Yukon to the sea. Many hadn’t emerged from the interior for decades. Nearly all had been destitute the previous spring. At the former Russian trading port of St. Michael, Alaska, they boarded the southbound coastal steamers Portland and Excelsior. On July 14, 1897, Excelsior docked in San Francisco, unloading more than a dozen free-spending Sourdoughs who ignited rumors of quick wealth. Two days later 5,000 people crowded Seattle’s waterfront to greet Portland. The Seattle Post Intelligencer published an extra edition with reporter Beriah Brown’s news the ship had brought “more than a ton of gold” from the Klondike.

The Klondike Gold Rush was on.

Thousands Set Out

Gold fever swept Seattle. Thousands of hopefuls jammed the streets to elbow and snarl their way to the docks. Store clerks quit by the hundreds. Streetcar service ground to a halt as operators resigned on the spot. Hotels booked up and restaurants were packed to bursting as people flooded to town. There was also an epidemic of stolen dogs, presumably smuggled north for use pulling sleds. Meanwhile, a ragtag fleet composed of anything that would float hastily assembled for a return voyage to the ports of entry in Alaska.

Seattle Mayor W.D. Wood was attending a conference in San Francisco when he read about Portland’s cargo. He promptly telegraphed in his resignation as mayor, raised $150,000 and bought a steamer to take him and paying passengers to St. Michael. John McGraw, president of Seattle’s First National Bank and the state’s former governor, booked passage on Portland for its return voyage. One man dying of lung disease boarded Portland, insisting to distressed relatives he would rather die trying to get rich than rot on his deathbed in poverty. 

Within months of the news more than 40 ships out of San Francisco alone were making regular passages to and from Alaska—no matter that many had been condemned and were waiting to be broken up in local shipyards. More than 100,000 people would ultimately set out for the Klondike.

The gold rush drew such Old West refugees as lawman Wyatt Earp, Tex Rickard and Frank Canton; madam Mattie Silks; frontier scouts Jack Crawford (“Poet Scout” of the West) and Luther “Yellowstone” Kelly; and Indian fighter “Arizona Charlie” Meadows. They mingled with thousands of inexperienced men and women willing to stake everything on a shot at striking it rich as the United States emerged from a horrific economic depression. People who had never lived off the land—schoolteachers, bank tellers, unemployed seamen, basketball coaches and single mothers with children to feed—all headed north. In 1887 steamship captain Billy Moore—who, guided by Skookum Jim, had pioneered the White Pass trail into the Canadian interior—claimed a 160-acre homestead at the mouth of the Skagway River. But the crush of follow-on prospectors ignored his claim. When surveyors of the city of Skagway later platted a street straight through the middle of Moore’s house, the grizzled old captain emerged swinging a crowbar only to be subdued by a mob.

Arriving in Skagway that summer, a young Jack London found streets of muddy ruts lined with tents, huts and hastily constructed wood-frame structures. Laughter, screams and sporadic gunfire filled the air. Murders were almost a nightly occurrence, and prostitutes conducted business in full public view. Famed Yukon Territory officer Sam Steele of Canada’s North-West Mounted Police deemed Skagway “little better than a hell on earth.”

London was just 21 when he arrived in Skagway. Hollywood has long portrayed him as an innocent, but that wasn’t true. Young London, whose birth father had deserted his pregnant mother, went to work delivering papers, sweeping saloons, setting up pins at bowling alleys and working in a cannery all by the age of 13. After trying his hand at pirating commercial oyster beds, he hired out to the Californian Fish Patrol to hunt down the very oyster pirates with whom he’d worked. 

At age 17 he shipped for Japan, en route encountering a dynamic mariner and sealer who became the model for his 1904 novel The Sea-Wolf. On his return stateside he marched across the country with other socialist activists to Washington, D.C. In Buffalo, N.Y., he was arrested for vagrancy and served 30 days in jail.

By the time of the Klondike Gold Rush he was starving in his chosen profession as a writer. When he mentioned the strike to his 54-year-old brother-in-law, James Shepard, the latter offered to grubstake the 21-year-old if Shepard could join him. London agreed. On July 25, 1897, the unlikely pair sailed from San Francisco aboard the steamship Umatilla. Aboard they fell in with carpenter Merritt Sloper, placer miner Jim Goodman and Fred Thompson, who kept a journal of their adventures. On August 2 the five disembarked at Juneau and canoed to Skagway from there.

By then Skagway was under the thumb of a ruthless gang controlled by one Jefferson Randolph “Soapy” Smith—a con man, or “sure thing man” in Western parlance. Having ventured to Alaska from Denver, he and his cohorts had first moved in on Wrangell, a backdoor port to the Klondike a few hundred miles down the coast. Moving north, Soapy had considered taking over Dyea, just upriver from Skagway, but former lawman turned trader John J. Healy had proved too powerful an opponent, so Smith and his men settled on Skagway. Soapy’s saloons sold watered down whiskey to northbound prospectors, while his henchmen ran a protection racket on competing saloons. 

En route to Alaska aboard the steamship Utopia the gang had helped the ailing Captain “Dynamite Johnny” O’Brien put down a mutiny. Johnny returned the favor by allowing Soapy and his men to travel free on O’Brien’s growing fleet of ships. While aboard Soapy’s men would target a mark worth plucking and then pounce amid the crowded frenzy when the ship disembarked in Skagway. O’Brien had a massive fleet, all Skagway bound. Most Klondike prospectors came north on one of his ships, and each had Soapy men on its manifest.

Soapy ran a dockside information booth that sold newcomers maps of the White Pass, the best campsites helpfully marked with X’s. What they didn’t know is that Soapy’s men were waiting at those X’s to rob and even murder them. Perhaps Smith’s “best” con was his Dominion Telegraph Service—not that Alaska had telegraph service. Dominion’s line comprised a section of wire strung from town and nailed to a tree in the deep woods. Newcomers who didn’t know any better would rush into the telegraph office and, for a fee, “wire home” with news of their arrival. Some hours later a convincing runner would locate the customer and hand him a reply—almost always a plea to immediately wire home money. Presented with such a desperate request, the mark would continue to open his wallet until someone set him straight.

Braving the Pass

On the Taiya River some 5 miles north of Skagway, Dyea sits at the foot of near vertical 3,759-foot Chilkoot Pass. Some 40,000 would-be millionaires confronted the pass in the first year of the gold rush, Dyea’s population swelling from 1,000 to 8,000 by the spring of 1898.

Presented with a choice of fending off the Smith gang in Skagway or trying their luck in the pass, London and his friends chose to trek to Dyea and scale the Chilkoot into the Klondike. Soon after setting out, they met with a horrifying scene. The landscape was littered with dead and dying horses, as few of the 3,000 horses urged up the arduous trail that autumn survived. Inexperienced owners beat the animals, many of which dropped from exhaustion, slipped in the mire and fell to their deaths. Others succumbed to wounds rent by jagged rocks.

“The horses died like mosquitoes in the first frost,” London wrote, “and from Skagway to [Lake] Bennett they rotted in heaps.” 

On reaching the top of the pass, the party encountered Mounties who demanded each prospector have 1,000 pounds of supplies before proceeding into the Yukon. It took London and his friends 20 days to porter sufficient supplies over the summit, an effort that broke the health of his brother-in-law, who returned to San Francisco. At one point while hefting his goods upslope, London spotted a pair of boots sticking out of a snowbank. He tried picking them up only to find them still attached to the feet of a man who’d been buried in an avalanche minutes earlier. London and others pulled the very much alive and grateful man free.

Trails from both passes ended at Lake Bennett, which spans the border of British Columbia and Yukon territories. A vast tent city rose on its shoreline as 30,000 hopeful prospectors waited for the frozen lake to thaw so they could raft the 500 or so miles downstream to Dawson and the Klondike. On May 29 the ice broke, and by day’s end 800 assorted boats and rafts had set off. Within 48 hours 7,124 had set sail. All had to shoot a series of rapids patrolled by the Mounties, who were on hand to recover the dead.

London and party tempted fate on the rapids. He and his party shot through Miles Canyon Rapids without any problems, though their boat rocketed downstream within 6 feet of the canyon’s granite walls. After helping a couple get through, they took on Whitehorse Rapids. Amid that stretch a whirlpool captured their craft in its spin, nearly throwing everyone overboard. London lost all rudder control. Only by chance did the whirlpool just as suddenly pop their boat free. 

During the first winter of the gold rush starvation had almost wiped out Dawson. Too many people had arrived without sufficient food—hence the Mounties’ stiffened requirements. Saloonman McPhee of Forty Mile fame turned his Dawson saloon into an after-hours shelter for the homeless, whom he fed. The population reached 500 by year’s end 1896. Six months later it had grown to 5,000. By year’s end 1897 it boasted a population approaching 20,000, its residents almost all hailing from the United States.

Rumor had it Dawson again lacked sufficient food stores for the coming winter. That prompted London and party on October 8 to pull ashore on Split-Up Island, at the mouth of the Stewart River some 75 river miles short of their destination, so as not to be around whatever was about to befall Dawson. They would overwinter in one of the many abandoned cabins. It was there London’s observations inspired his short story “To Build a Fire.”

After a 47-day visit to Dawson, marked by much drinking and camaraderie, London and friends returned to their isolated cabin, and soon winter temperatures plunged to minus 40. For months their daily routine consisted of collecting ice, chopping firewood and shoveling snow, as well as preparing the three B’s—beans, bread and bacon—that sustained most overwintering prospectors. By spring London’s gums were swollen and bleeding. He had scurvy and still no gold.

Fortunes Gained and Lost

Of the 100,000 hopefuls that set out, roughly 35,000 reached the Klondike. Among those only a few thousand found any gold, and only a couple hundred of those in quantities enough to truly be considered “rich.” Whether they were wide-eyed young adventurers like London, weathered lawmen, teachers, bank tellers or prostitutes, Dawson’s varied residents shared a certain kinship as they slogged its muddy streets past saloons, warehouses, whorehouses and churches. For better or worse, they had stuck it out, while the majority had turned back.

Some of the prospectors did quite well. “Swiftwater Bill” Gates’ claim was literally knee deep in gold. He spent his Klondike fortune but found another in Nome after having returned to Alaska with one especially irate mother-in-law in hot pursuit. In one two-hour span Jim Tweed found $4,284 in nuggets on his claim, while Frank Dinsmore took $24,489 in gold in a single day. Albert Lancaster averaged $2,000 a day over eight weeks. Brooklynite Gus Mack found enough gold to start Mack Trucks with his brothers, and with a fortune earned by entertaining Klondike miners Sid Grauman opened his namesake Chinese Theater in Los Angeles.

Others followed more traditional paths. Lying George Carmack invested in Seattle real estate and died a wealthy man. So did Clarence “C.J.” Berry, who returned from Alaska with $1.5 million in gold. Outside his cabin in the Yukon he’d placed a coffee can containing rough nuggets, a whiskey bottle and a sign reading, Help Yourself. Prospector turned philanthropist Tom Lippy donated land to expand Seattle General Hospital. Lawman turned saloonman Tex Rickard left Alaska to build the third iteration of New York City’s Madison Square Garden, while playwright and con man Wilson Mizner opened the Brown Derby restaurant in Los Angeles.

Dawson prostitutes Silks and “Diamond Tooth Lil” Davenport made a fortune mining the miners, while “Klondike Kate” Rockwell, “Diamond Tooth” Gertie Lovejoy and other dance hall girls also cleaned up. Two won notoriety for quite literally selling themselves. Grace Drummond sold herself to Charley “Lucky Swede” Anderson for $50,000, and Bill Gates bought Gussie Lamore for $30,000, her wedding present determined by her literal weight in gold.

Others’ fortunes slipped through their hands. Through no fault of his own Anderson lost his when the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire destroyed his real estate holdings. He died in 1939 pushing a wheelbarrow at a sawmill for $3.25 a day. Anton Stander built Seattle’s Stander Hotel before liquidating the rest of his fortune in alcohol. Pat Galvin spent his fortune investing in riverboats and was battered into bankruptcy by the rough Yukon.

London made it out of the Yukon in 1898 by sailing downriver to the Bering. By the time he set foot back in San Francisco, he had only $4.50 in gold in his pockets but a wealth of stories to write. 

By then homebound prospectors—fed up with being scammed, robbed and worse by the Smith gang when they returned south through Skagway—were largely leaving the Klondike westbound via the Yukon River. On the evening of July 8 the town’s equally fed up vigilance committee met on the wharf to discuss what to do about Soapy. When Smith came to break up the meeting, he engaged in a shootout with a man guarding the dock. Both were killed.

On the night of April 26, 1899, fire broke out in the room of a Dawson dance hall girl, and the city was soon ablaze. Some 117 buildings, from the most ornate hotels to riverside shacks, were reduced to ashes. Most of the Klondike goldfields had been claimed by then. 

When word came later that spring that the very landing beaches of Nome held gold, 8,000 residents abandoned Dawson for the new strike.

The Klondike Gold Rush was over. 

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For further reading on this topic author Mike Coppock recommends Coming Into the Country, by John McPhee, and Alaska: Saga of a Bold Land, by Walter R. Borneman.

Most Western mining camps marked distinct beginnings and endings based on the initial discovery of precious metals and the end of mining activities. Such towns sprang into being, boomed with profitability and then faded away when the costs of extracting the metal from the porphyry exceeded the return. Gold Hill also faced the challenge of its location in a deep and precipitous canyon given to flooding. Indeed, its very discovery in January 1859 was driven by men who journeyed to the head of Gold Canyon in response to snowmelt from warm weather. They followed a rivulet north up the ravine to discover a huge quartz outcrop streaked with gold. It resembled a veritable hill of gold, hence the name of the town that rose up beneath it. 

The very channel of the ravine that led men to its riches became the main business street through town. Within months of the discovery Gold Hill comprised a scattering of log houses and one large log boardinghouse inhabited by a few hardy miners scraping out $20 a day. Placer miners would exploit the shimmering hillock for three years before realizing it was an extension of the Comstock Lode and that silver ore was thus more plentiful and profitable than the gold. 

It was in June 1859 that miners discovered the seemingly inexhaustible silver deposits of the Comstock, a mile north of Gold Hill, thrusting the entire region into prominence. Though destined to toil in the shadow of Virginia City—the town the Comstock birthed and Nevada’s largest metropolis through century’s end—the residents of Gold Hill could still crow about its age. It was five months older than Virginia City and boasted the territory’s oldest mill (erected in 1860), as well as some of the oldest foundries and factories supplying machinery for the mines and mills. As its mines developed, the population grew, and hard rock mining replaced the placer claims. Such productive mines as the Yellow Jacket, Crown Point, Kentuck, Belcher, Justice, Imperial and Empire duly garnered headlines nationwide. By 1864 nine boardinghouses lined Gold Hill’s steep streets, and the population peaked in 1875 at roughly 8,000 souls.

Blacksmith V.A. Houseworth, the first so-called recorder in Gold Hill, kept his tattered book of records behind the bar of a local saloon, the miners recording their own claims as they saw fit. The original June 1859 location notice of the Yellow Jacket mine claimed 1,200 feet of a vein, including all its depths and spurs—“depths and spurs” meaning the miners intended to follow the vein of precious metal wherever it led, regardless of how complicated or conflicted it became with other claims. One historian estimated that more money was made by Comstock lawyers trying to settle poorly recorded claims than was generated by the mines themselves.

One enduring local rags-to-riches-to-rags love story centered on Alison “Eilley” Oram Bowers and her younger, handsome husband, Sandy. Eilley ran one of the first boardinghouses in town, and Sandy was one of her longtime boarders. Their love grew as his wealth from the mine bearing his surname mushroomed. The two soon built a magnificent home in the Washoe Valley, today preserved as a museum within a regional park. Sadly, their lavish lifestyle ended when Sandy fell ill and died at age 35. Bankrupted soon after, Eilley resorted to telling fortunes and prognosticating under the alias of “The Famous Washoe Seeress,” though apparently she didn’t foresee her own eventual impoverishment and death.

Gold Hill enjoyed solid, steady growth through the 1860s. By 1864 residents had erected a Town Hall, with police court and jail, opposite the popular Vesey House. The oldest operating hotel in Nevada, it welcomes visitors today as the Gold Hill Hotel. Virginia & Truckee Railroad tourist trains make occasional stops at the restored depot.

In 1867 the Gold Hill Daily News estimated that a stunning $85 million ($1.8 billion in today’s dollars) had been extracted to date from the state’s mines. Seven years later the aggregate value of the Virginia City and Gold Hill mines topped $93 million (nearly $2 billion in today’s dollars). But all that wealth came at a steep cost. In the early morning hours of April 7, 1869, a fire broke out in the Yellow Jacket. It soon spread to the Crown Point and Kentuck, claiming the lives of at least 35 men (perhaps as many as 45) in one of the worst mining disasters in American history. The day shift began work at 7 a.m., and dozens of men were lowered into the mine before the fire was discovered. Families gathered at the surface in despair to wait inconsolably for lost husbands, brothers and sons. At the time the popular dramatic actress Amy Stone was playing Piper’s Opera House in Virginia City, and she promptly hosted benefit concerts for the families of the deceased Gold Hill miners.

Gold Hill’s most famous resident may have been author Mark Twain, who lived in a local boardinghouse sometime in 1863. A co-worker from Twain’s days at Virginia City’s Territorial Enterprise recalled their having roomed together in Gold Hill. But traditional hard-rock mining ended in the late 1880s, and the Gold Hill of Twain’s memory is long gone, having faded with the long-ago shriek of steam whistles and thunderous bellow of machinery.

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At least a half dozen times in his life Wyatt Earp placed himself in harm’s way by pinning a tin star to his lapel. He policed two Kansas cow towns—Wichita and Dodge City—before making headlines in Tombstone, Arizona Territory. Chroniclers also record later stints as a deputy in Kootenai County, Idaho, and Cibola, Ariz. But few recall the time Earp served as a lawman in frontier Alaska amid the Klondike Gold Rush.

By year’s end 1896 Earp had hit a low point. Financial woes had forced him and common-law wife Josephine Sarah Marcus (“Sadie” to Wyatt) to change addresses often in San Francisco, for a time even living with her parents. Then came a break, as he agreed to referee a high-profile heavyweight boxing match between up-and-coming Cornishman Bob Fitzsimmons and brawler Tom Sharkey that December 2. Things went bad from the start. As Earp climbed through the ropes into the ring, he revealed a concealed .45-caliber Colt revolver, which he had to surrender on the spot to a police captain before the crowd of 15,000.

In the eighth round Fitzsimmons landed a devastating uppercut, and Sharkey fell forward rather than backward, receiving what may have been an unintentional blow to the groin from Fitzsimmons. After ordering the fighters to their corners, Earp declared Sharkey the winner, citing Fitzsimmons’ foul. The crowd exploded with anger.

Fitzsimmons’ promoters took the decision to court, the boxer’s attorney claiming Earp had telegraphed friends to bet on Sharkey. Though the judge dismissed the baseless allegation as hearsay, the damage was done. Adding insult to injury, Earp was fined $50 for having carried the concealed pistol into the ring. 

His reputation sullied and pockets empty, Earp was desperate for an income. In stepped fate.

On July 14, 1897, the steamship Excelsior docked in San Francisco, disembarking gold-bearing prospectors rife with rumors of a major strike in Canada’s Yukon Territory. Two days later the steamer Portland unloaded “a ton of gold” in Seattle, confirming the rumors. At the time Wyatt and Sadie were in Yuma seeking funds for a mining venture. They sold everything they had for the passage to Alaska. 

Within months more than 40 ships sailed for Alaska from San Francisco alone. Many were derelicts scheduled to be broken up in shipyards.

By then Earp himself had become something of a derelict. Pushing 50, he had grown a belly and jowls, and his trademark handlebar mustache had begun to turn gray.

Other Old West derelicts would make their way to the Klondike. Denver con man Jefferson “Soapy” Smith told his cousin, “Alaska is the last West,” before heading north to terrorize Wrangell and Skagway. Serial adventurer Luther “Yellowstone” Kelly ventured to Alaska to map the interior. Lawman Frank Canton, John Clum of Tombstone and Geronimo fame, showman “Arizona Charlie” Meadows, Denver madam Mattie Silks and “Captain Jack” Crawford, the “Poet Scout” of the West, all went north.

Wyatt and Sadie had underestimated their travel costs, given gold rush prices, and were close to going broke as their ship approached Wrangell, Alaska.

Wrangell had always been a wild place. During the gold rush a flotilla of riverboats hauled prospectors and cargo from its port up the Stikine River into the Canadian interior. Town itself comprised a motley collection of 139 cedar plank and log structures. It also held a courthouse, a jail, a customhouse, a sawmill, a brewery, a boardinghouse, a restaurant, a handful of saloons, three stores and a shoemaker’s shop. Rough plank boardwalks kept locals out of the mud under what seemed a constant rain. 

Though Soapy Smith made his headquarters up the coast in Skagway, his gang initially held Wrangell in the same grip of terror, demanding a percentage of each saloon’s take and openly robbing and even murdering prospectors along the trails leading to the interior. That Wrangell was the only place in Alaska where dance hall girls performed in the nude spoke volumes about the port.

The U.S. marshal for the District of Alaska was desperately seeking a deputy to temporarily police Wrangell, as the man he’d hired wouldn’t arrive for weeks. The marshal had been keeping law and order as best he could, but eventually he’d have to return to the district capital at Sitka. It must have seemed a godsend, then, when out of the blue none other than Wyatt Earp approached him about the position. Earp considered Wrangell a “hell on wheels” town, worse than Tombstone had been. Still, he needed the money, so he accepted the temporary duty.

Realizing he represented the hated law to a sordid collection of gunmen, prostitutes, pimps, gamblers and thugs, Earp planned to sit things out as quietly as possible until his replacement arrived. That the Smith gang controlled vice in town was to his advantage. He and Bat Masterson had had dealings with Soapy when the three of them were mining the miners in Creede, Colo. How much Earp was counting on that acquaintance in order to survive in Wrangell is unclear. But he knew that as long as he kept his nose out of Soapy’s business, he’d be safe.

Then it happened. One evening a burly town tough got drunk and began shooting up a saloon. Bystanders sent for the pudgy marshal. When Earp arrived and demanded the man surrender his gun, the intoxicated shooter broke into a smile. “I know you!” he exclaimed. “You’re Wyatt Earp!” Twenty years earlier Earp had thrown the man and his drunken cowboy cohorts out of a Dodge City saloon. For the rest of that evening in Wrangell the antagonists stood at the bar reminiscing about the “good old days.”

Though amused by the incident, Earp also recognized it as a close call and a reminder to lay low for the duration of his time in town. Thankfully, within 10 days of Wyatt and Sadie’s arrival his replacement arrived. As soon as the new deputy marshal stepped from the gangplank, the couple caught the first northbound steamer to Juneau. Local wags joked that Wrangell had proved “too wild for Wyatt.” 

In Juneau the couple learned Sadie was pregnant, and they decided to return to San Francisco. Better to deliver their child in her parents’ home than on the Alaskan frontier. No sooner had they arrived Stateside, however, than Sadie suffered a miscarriage.

The lure of riches soon drew the couple north to Alaska again. This time they took the “rich man’s route,” sailing up the Yukon River bound for Dawson. But they were iced in for the winter. Come spring, they drifted back downriver and soon headed to the new strike in Nome, where Earp opened the Dexter, the only two-story saloon in the district. So, it was back to mining miners.

When the Earps finally left Alaska, in 1900, they carried $85,000 on them.  

this article first appeared in wild west magazine

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Wyatt Earp 

The “Lion of Tombstone” was over the hill, pudgy and graying when he headed for the Klondike in 1897, initially accepting a temporary stint as a lawman in Wrangell, Alaska. He and a pregnant Sadie, his common-law wife, turned back at Juneau. A year later they again tried for the Klondike, setting out on the “rich man’s route” up the Yukon River from St. Michael, Alaska, before becoming iced in that winter with boxing promoter Tex Rickard and novelist Rex Beach. Finally giving up on the Klondike, the Earps joined the Nome Gold Rush, Wyatt and a partner opening the two-story Dexter Saloon. 

Jack London

If London hadn’t ventured north, he would have been forever linked to maritime literature for his 1904 novel The Sea-Wolf. On arrival in the Klondike in 1897 he was no longer the young innocent. Among other escapades, he helped save a family from drowning on the Yukon River and spent weeks patronizing Klondike saloons. A year later, broke and battling scurvy, he continued downriver to the Bering Sea and worked his way home to California on a steamer. London was not only a great writer, but also the real deal.

Bill McPhee

McPhee drifted into the Yukon in 1888 and later opened saloons in Forty Mile, Dawson City and Fairbanks. He grubstaked such successful prospectors as C.J. Berry and Frank Dinsmore, Berry later returning the favor by paying to rebuild McPhee’s fire-ravaged Fairbanks saloon. During the bitterly cold winter months McPhee transformed his Dawson saloon into housing for the poor, saving their lives. Not until 1921 did age and failing eyesight finally force the saloonman into retirement in San Francisco.

Jefferson “Soapy” Smith

Elbowed out of Denver in 1897, Smith and gang headed north for the Klondike just as it boomed. Soon he controlled both Wrangell and Skagway through murder, intimidation and imaginative con jobs. It all proved bad for legitimate business, as homebound prospectors instead opted for the onward Yukon River route. Soapy met his end in a classic 1898 gunfight with vigilante Frank Reid on Skagway’s Juneau Wharf.

Clarence “C.J.” Berry

Top dog of the “Klondike Kings,” Berry started out as one of McPhee’s bartenders before the saloonman grubstaked him. C.J. found so much gold that he reportedly left a bucket of nuggets and a bottle of whiskey outside his cabin with a sign reading, Help Yourself. Unlike most riches-to-rags prospectors, however, he invested in oil-rich properties in California, exponentially increasing his fortune.

Harriet Pullen

The pioneering Pullen arrived in Skagway with only $7 and began making pies to sell to prospectors. With her profits she bought a cabin, sent for her husband and four kids and started a freighting business hauling goods over the White Pass Trail. When the rush subsided, she opened the Pullen House. Catering to high society, the hotel made Harriet and family a fortune. She died there in 1947.

Sam Steele

The enduring image of the Mounties stems from the Klondike, and the superintendent of the North-West Mounted Police division in the Yukon was Steele. With relatively few men the no-nonsense Steele established customs posts atop passes into the Yukon, ensured prospectors brought enough goods to support themselves and tamped down on crime, bringing order out of disorder.

this article first appeared in wild west magazine

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