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Post by Deleted on Mar 8, 2013 8:41:51 GMT 10
The train gangButch and the boys robbed a few railroads.By ANDREW GULLIFORD - The Durango Herald | 10:38AM - Thursday, September 13, 2012This photo of Butch Cassidy was taken at the Wyoming State Penitentiary, where he served two years for stealing a $5 horse. Butch was born Robert Leroy Parker in a small Mormon community in Beaver, Utah. He learned his trade from the horse and cattle rustler Mike Cassidy. Because Robert had been a butcher in Rock Springs, Wyoming, he earned the nickname Butch Cassidy. — Photo: Courtesy of Andrew Guilliford.THE OUTLAW TRAIL.
For stealing a $5 horse, Butch Cassidy spent two years in the Wyoming State Prison. He learned his lesson, though. He never got caught stealing horses again. Instead he turned to robbing trains. Butch figured they'd pay better. He was right.
A square-jawed, stocky, tow-headed cowboy with gray eyes and a winning smile, Butch had a way with women. When he had the money, he spent lavishly and he was known in every whorehouse from Miles City, Montana, to Fort Worth, Texas. Paperback dollars, bank certificates, and silver and gold coins slipped through his grasp, yet Butch and the Wild Bunch never robbed railroad passengers. He was quick with a gun, but he never killed anyone, at least not in the United States, and just as railroads began to reach their pinnacle of power across the American West in the 1890s and early 1900s, Butch developed a fondness for railway express cars. And he knew how to open safes... With dynamite.
As a Western historian I've spent years on the trail of Butch and the boys. I've tracked him down in Brown's Park, Colorado, followed him to Hole in the Wall in Wyoming, and I'm learning his haunts in the Robbers Roost area of Utah. I've been on the Outlaw Trail with Butch and he inspired many stories. Some of them are even true.
Yes, he raced horses in McElmo Canyon and yes, he robbed the bank in Telluride. Detective Charles Siringo rode through Durango in search of Butch, but the wily outlaw was already far to the south on the WS Ranch near Alma, New Mexico. There are many tales to tell of Butch, but let's focus on one of his favorite topics — robbing trains.
Cassidy would become a wanted man in four states, and his loose band of outlaws, nicknamed the Wild Bunch, terrified bank presidents and railroad executives. Pinkerton detectives trailed Butch and came close to catching him, but they were always a step too late at the livery stable, the scene of the crime, his campsite or a bordello.
Butch knew how to dodge sheriffs and lose posses, but he never learned to save his ill-gotten gains. He either gambled it away, or shared it with friends, or spent it on lawyers both for himself and his compadres. And when he was out of money, why, Butch and the boys knew just what to do. They'd rob another train.This famous group photo of the Wild Bunch, taken near a red-light district called Hell’s Half Acre, features the Sundance Kid on bottom left and Butch Cassidy on bottom right. They had at least 50 images printed up in the John Swartz Photography Studio in Fort Worth and even had the cheek to mail one back to Winnemucca, Nevada, to the president of the bank they had robbed the month before. — Photo: Courtesy of Union Pacific Railroad Museum Collection.Yes, on occasion Butch and the boys used a little too much dynamite. In trying to blow this express car safe, they destroyed the entire railcar. To keep passengers from getting injured Butch Cassidy always separated the express car from the other passenger cars. — Photo: Courtesy of Union Pacific Railroad Museum Collection.In between robberies Butch and the gang drifted across the West working at ranches. They never robbed from their employers, and the big cattlemen were astonished that when Butch hired on as a ranch hand, all theft of cattle ceased. Consequently, he was often promoted to ranch manager.
He was cool and calculating with guns — he preferred a Colt .45 and a Winchester .44-40 Saddle Ring carbine rifle, but he rarely fired them during a heist. “They were all gentlemanly,” said trainmen after being robbed by the Wild Bunch. Railroad president E.H. Harriman was not amused. He invented a special horse or posse car complete with armed marshals, deputies, weapons and fast horses.
Butch carefully planned each robbery. He would spend weeks getting to know the landscape, deciding where to leave extra horses, and deliberating on the best place to separate the railroad engine from the express car, which usually carried two safes. The Wild Bunch preferred to rob trains at night or just before dawn, with one outlaw on the train as a paying passenger who would crawl over the tender and sneak up on the engineer.
Butch started robbing trains because his earlier career of stealing horses and busting banks had become uncomfortable. Too many posses too close on his trail. As railroad owners devised steel express cars and posses on wheels, it looked like Butch's train-robbing days were over.
Robbing trains had gotten out of hand. Between 1890 and 1899 thieves successfully plotted 261 train robberies resulting in 86 injuries and 88 deaths. Most of the robberies had occurred in the West. What did the trainmen think? They were getting used to robberies and to Butch. Even the Pinkerton Detective Agency stated that Butch was “amiable and agreeable.” Though occasionally a railroad engineer might be whacked on the head by an outlaw's pistol, train robberies were relatively safe compared to operating trains. Statistics for 1889 from the Interstate Commerce Commission revealed 2,000 rail workers killed and over 20,000 injured on the job.Butch Cassidy and the boys liked to drink. So much so that they shot up a bar in Baggs, Wyoming, paid the bartender for each bullet hole, and he made enough money to open a new bar in Rawlins. Butch and other outlaws hiding out in Brown’s Park may have enjoyed batches of moonshine from this still at the John Jarvie Ranch. — Photo: Courtesy of Andrew Guilliford.The John Jarvie Ranch, now an historic site administered by the Bureau of Land Management in Brown’s Park, in northwestern Colorado, includes this cellar reputed to be one of Butch’s hideouts. — Photo: Courtesy of Andrew Guilliford.At Tipton, Wyoming, a masked robber crawled over the tender and told the engineer, “slow down when you see a fire along the track and don't try any funny stuff.” The engineer complied. Soon valuable express shipments carried extra guards with repeating shotguns. Rumors abounded of the potential use of Gatling guns. Butch had second thoughts, too, but he wanted one last heist before moving to South America.
Under Butch's leadership the final exploit of the Wild Bunch occurred near Wagner, Montana, where on July 3rd, 1901, the boys held up a Great Northern train. After uncoupling the express car and using their trademark dynamite to open the safe, they took $40,000 in unsigned banknotes. The funds would help Butch and the Sundance Kid begin a ranch in Argentina.
They supplemented their ranch income by robbing Bolivian banks, but Butch never got proficient speaking Spanish. He missed the soiled doves in Fort Worth, and there were few female companions on the Argentine pampas. In 1908, Robert Leroy Parker (Butch) and Harry Longabaugh (Sundance) robbed their last train near Eucalyptus, Bolivia. The robbers made off with $90,000 in cash. Perhaps they needed the money, or maybe they did it for old-time's sake.
The cowboy outlaw era ended with Butch. Robbing trains became a thing of the past, but at the turn of the century, railroad executives did their own thieving by conspiring to fix high freight rates which forced small farmers into bankruptcy. Charles Kelly wrote of the Wild Bunch, “These wild, free souls saw great fortunes being made all around them by cattle kings, railroad magnates and mining nabobs who got there first. ... Cowboy-outlaws resented this attitude and felt no twinges of conscience whatever in robbing railroads, mines and banks.”
Who was robbing whom? If Butch and the boys stole a few dollars, the unregulated railroad industry squandered human lives. In 1907 unsafe working conditions and long hours killed 4,354 railroad workers, and countless accidents injured thousands more. Folksinger Woody Guthrie said it best when he wrote “The Ballad of Jesse James” about another famous train robber. Guthrie penned:
“As through this world I wander, I meet lots of funny men;
Some men rob you with a six-gun, some with a fountain pen;
As through this world I wander, and through this world I roam;
I never saw an outlaw drive a family from their home.”• Andrew Gulliford is a professor of history at Fort Lewis College. His grandfather was a railroad detective on the Great Northern Railway.www.durangoherald.com/article/20120913/COLUMNISTS02/120919815/The-train-gang
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Post by Deleted on Mar 8, 2013 8:42:09 GMT 10
Searching for SundancePlace of death a mystery, but he lived and hid out in Southwest ColoradoBy ANDREW GULLIFORD - The Durango Herald | 3:05PM - Friday, October 12, 2012This famous photo of the Sundance Kid and the beautiful Etta Place was taken in New York City after he had bought her an expensive diamond watch at Tiffany’s. The watch is pinned to her blouse. Questions remain about whether Sundance died in a shootout with the Bolivian Army, but even less is known about Etta, though on July 29, 1905 the S.S. Seguranca arrived in New York City from Panama and on board was a Mrs. E. Place. Rumors persist that she went on to San Francisco and disappeared after the 1906 earthquake. — Photo: Courtesy of Andrew Guilliford.MONTEZUMA COUNTY.
I’ve followed the Outlaw Trail looking for Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch. Butch caroused with a lot of outlaws, but his best friend the Sundance Kid grew up here in Southwest Colorado. I’ve been searching for Sundance in Cortez and Montezuma County, and I’ve heard some interesting stories and crawled into an outlaw cave or two.
The thing about an outlaw is you don’t claim him as family when he’s doing his deeds, but let a century pass and then he’s fine to call yours. He’s earned his place back on the family tree, but famous Western outlaws have a hard time staying dead and buried.
Harry Alonzo Longabaugh grew up in a blue-collar family in Pennsylvania. At age 14, in 1882, he left home to help distant cousin George Longabaugh, who had moved to Durango. George was lured farther west to homestead near Cortez. Harry stayed with the family for four years but by early 1886 he chose to ride on. Within a year he would be arrested on three counts of grand larceny for horse theft and stealing personal goods “against the peace and dignity of the Territory of Wyoming.” Confined to the county jail in Sundance, Wyo., he earned the nickname The Sundance Kid.
What prompted his life of crime? What had young Harry learned in Cortez and Montezuma County that suggested horse stealing as an honorable profession? And even after he was convicted and jailed, Sundance was unwilling to accept the judge’s decree of an 18-month sentence. Longabaugh and a fellow prisoner attempted an escape on May 1, 1888, but were returned to their cells. When Sundance served his time and got out of jail, he was not yet 21.
Coming to Cortez at 15, Harry learned to rope and ride and shoot a Colt .45. He knew good horse flesh. He probably knew how to brand cattle not his own, and he learned how to live out of saddle bags and move through the country fast, without being seen. The West was wide open. To a young man with grit and gumption there seemed easier ways to make a living than to settle on a homestead, scrape sagebrush, plow and plant and wait for rain.
Local haunts became outlaw caves and north-south routes became known as the Hoot Owl Trail within a larger Outlaw Trail system between Utah and Wyoming. Desperados or questionable men who kept their hats pulled down low over their eyes were known as Hoot-Owlers. Cattle and horse theft was rampant, and for big outfits like the Carlisle Cattle Co. out of Monticello, Utah, that ran thousands of head, who would miss a few unbranded cattle? Most of the petty outlaws stole this and that and remained anonymous. Only Sundance would have his own file created by the Pinkerton Detective Agency and his sister’s mail surreptitiously opened.Bud Poe has worked to conserve thousands of acres in Trail Canyon west of Cortez. On his private land is an outlaw cave impossible to see unless you are 10 feet in front of it. — Photo: Courtesy of Andrew Guilliford.Once inside the outlaw cave, which is on Bud Poe’s property west of Cortez, three to four men could sleep out of the weather and with little chance of being found. — Photo: Courtesy of Andrew Guilliford.An outlaw cave can be found on land Bud Poe owns in Trail Canyon west of Cortez. Poe thinks it may have been a waypoint on the Hoot Owl Trail system with access between the Great Sage Plain and McElmo Canyon.
“It was very exciting to see it for the first time,” Poe says. “Unless you’re within 10 feet of the cave, you don’t know it’s there.”
Though the roof has fallen in and no artifacts or dates were found, there’s no question that someone dug out the cave and built a substantial 2-foot-tall berm of rock and dirt at the cave’s lip for concealment. Poe said, “You can kind of stand up in the cave. You could get four guys to sleep in it, and down below is evidence of a brush fence to enclose cattle or horses.”
As we stood atop the hideout on a sandstone ledge facing Sleeping Ute Mountain, Poe said, “Sundance may have heard about this cave.” We’ll never know, but in Montezuma County, rumors abound.
Longtime rancher Al Heaton has found outlaw hideouts on his range including Squaw Point on Bureau of Land Management land west of Pleasant View. Heaton found rocks built up under an overhang big enough for two people to sleep in with a firepit out front and “a horse corral 500 yards away well secluded from each other.” Heaton adds, “The distance gives it away as an outlaw hideout. Sheepherders would have had their corrals right there.”
He found another site five miles from Slickrock with “a pretty fancy fireplace” and a hidden meadow that “you just have to ride into to see it. You can’t see it from across the canyon, and it has feed enough for a month. I found it tracking a cow.”Archie Hanson, developer of Indian Camp Ranch, has a dugout or cellar on his property which may have been an outlaw hangout. It’s been stabilized and no trace of a chimney or stovepipe exists. A source of heat would have been important for a prolonged stay. — Photo: Courtesy of Andrew Guilliford.Two pieces of metal, one with a cutout for a stovepipe, lie on the ground near the cave entrance, but no other artifacts have been found other than the remains of a brush corral close to the canyon’s bottom. — Photo: Courtesy of Andrew Guilliford.At Indian Camp Ranch, Archie Hanson has a root cellar that may have been an outlaw hangout, but there’s no evidence of habitation even though local legends tell of outlaws using nearby Alkali Creek. Former Cortez barber Carl Armstrong spoke with Walter Longabaugh, who died at 98. The aging Longabaugh told him, “When I was 12 or 14 I carried fresh eggs, milk and butter to the dugout. My mother would fix it all up.” But we’re not sure which dugout received the provisions.
What we do know was a famous horse race with Butch and Sundance in McElmo Canyon near Hartman Draw on “a big flat” left a Ute Indian dead and caused the cowboys to flee to Robbers Roost in Utah. Armstrong says, “They had a horse race and bet a horse against a horse. They lived in a dugout and had a run-in with Indians” not over who won the race but what the spoils would be. Guns were drawn over the disagreement and the cowboys slapped leather.
“Once they won a local Mancos horse race, but they didn’t take any money out of the country. They gave it all back in the bars and such,” Armstrong said.
In Western history the outgoing, jovial Butch, and the quiet, sharpshooting Sundance made quite a name for themselves. Sundance took up with the beautiful Etta Place and bought her a diamond watch at Tiffany’s in New York. They went on to rob banks and trains but never small homesteaders or ranchers. It’s still a mystery where Butch and Sundance lived and hid out in Montezuma County, but in the end they died in a shootout with the Bolivian army in 1908. Or did they? Into the 1930s there were supposed sightings of Butch across the West.
Donna B. Ernst wrote The Sundance Kid (University of Oklahoma Press, 2009) and it is a standard reference, but there’s a new book by Marilyn Grace titled Finding the Sundance Kid: Solving the Wild Bunch Mystery. She dug up a grave in Duchesne, Utah, and claims DNA testing on the remains proves it was Sundance, buried in 1936 under the alias William Henry Long.
Duchesne Mayor Rojean Rowley agrees: “They’ve dug up this grave three times and it’s my understanding that it’s the Sundance Kid. It’s an outlaw with a hole in his leg, though there’s controversy among the family about it.”
That’s the thing about famous outlaws. They ride the Outlaw Trail and not only do their legends live on, they won’t stay dead and buried.• Andrew Gulliford is a professor of history and Environmental Studies at Fort Lewis College.www.durangoherald.com/article/20121014/COLUMNISTS02/121019884/Searching-for-Sundance
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Post by volk on Mar 8, 2013 9:58:43 GMT 10
snip... Volk, what part of He has since admitted his part don't you get? Caskur, Before our discussion continues any further I'm wondering if you could help me please, I think I've identified a communication issue? Our discussion arose from the following posts in this thread:- - Post # 6 (excerpt) "Like Mandela ....once a murderer, now the world's hero and yet, you think the death penalty for serial rapist and killers is wrong..."
- Post #7, "Mandela? Nelson Mandela? Was he a murderer?" and
- Post #10 "that's why he went to jail in the first place, dummy."
Are we discussing:- (a) the existence of a record (any record) that Nelson Mandela has been charged, prosecuted and convicted in a court of law for the offence of murder, or (b) Caskur thinks Nelson Mandela is a murderer? So far everything you've posted seems to be a discussion on the activities of the ANC or, the worst case, where you've tried to support your argument in reply #20 with nothing more than a personal comment on Wiki-Answers which you've tendered as reliable fact? Unless you can produce evidence to the contrary the only record we have for Nelson Mandela's incarceration is to repeat an extract from post #16, to wit:- "....and finally convicted in the Pretoria Supreme Court on the 12th June 1964 of sabotage and conspiracy to overthrow the government, subsequently receiving a life imprisonment.
He was not gaoled for murder, he has never been a convicted murderer no matter how you want to interpret it."To the person who started this thread I apologise for taking the thread off-topic, I would simply like to clarify what Caskur is actually discussing.
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