Who were the robbers of Gads Hill? There is little doubt that the James brothers were among the culprits. Later, Jesse’s widow even admitted so. Jesse’s share of the loot, which she said was one-fifth of $2,000, financed their wedding and honeymoon trip to Sherman, Texas. And what outlaw other than Frank James would have been so original as to quote Shakespeare while robbing a train?

As for the Youngers, Cole insisted that he and his brother Bob were visiting a friend, William Dickerson, in Carroll Parish, La., at the time of the robbery. Dickerson and 10 of his friends verified the claim. Jim and John Younger, on the other hand, had no alibi, and it might be speculated that they were the two robbers described by widow Cook as looking like brothers. Another reason for suspecting Jim and John is that they showed up in St. Clair County at about the time the retreating outlaws passed through the area.

The fifth man stood over 6 feet tall and was 40 or more years old, a description that matched known gang member Arthur McCoy. While he and the other suspects were being hunted, a St. Louis newspaper printed an anonymous letter that claimed McCoy had recently died in Texas. His ‘death’ had supposedly occurred just prior to the raids at Hot Springs and Gads Hill, making him innocent of those crimes. The mysterious letter may have been written by one of McCoy’s friends, or even by McCoy himself, in an effort to get the law off his back. At any rate, his demise at that time was never proved and, in the opinion of this writer, he remains a chief suspect.

Gads Hill, once described as ‘a small place, of no account,’ later became, for a few years during the lumber boom, a thriving community of some 600 people. It had at one time three steam sawmills, a water-powered gristmill, a hotel, a blacksmith shop and even a railroad depot. Eventually, though, as the pine forest was decimated and the timber industry slacked off, people began moving away.

The face of Gads Hill has changed many times over the years. Houses and stores have come and gone; the railroad station is no longer there; and an old oak tree, where legend claims Jesse tied his horse, died years ago. As of this writing, the former settlement consists only of one house, a bar and grill and two ‘city limit’ signs. A historical marker near the robbery site reads: ‘Gads Hill Train Robbery. Jesse James and Four Members of His Band Carried Out the First Missouri Train Robbery Here, January 31, 1874.’

The Gads Hill train raid was not as lucrative as some of the other James-Younger robberies. For example, the July 1876 train holdup near Otterville, Mo., netted the bandits more than $15,000. However, of all the crimes associated with these men, Gads Hill undoubtedly did the most to create the myth of Jesse James as an American Robin Hood. Reports of the outlaws stealing from the rich passengers aboard the train and tales of their giving to the poor widows and farmers as they escaped across the Ozarks are legendary. The chain of tragic events spawned by the crime, though, present a darker side to Jesse and his gang that even romanticists can’t ignore. These accounts of both good and evil, all byproducts of Gads Hill, aroused national interest in the outlaws when they were reported and remain to this day integral parts of the Jesse James story.

SIDEBAR:
The Lost Loot of Gads Hill
In early September 1948, almost 75 years after the infamous Jesse James train raid at Gads Hill, Missouri, a man cutting timber near the robbery site stumbled onto a small cavelike opening in the side of a hill. He thought little of it at the time and after finishing his work returned home. A couple of weeks later, he mentioned the incident to a neighbor, who recalled a local legend. For decades, his friend said, it had been told that during their retreat from Gads Hill in 1874, Jesse and his gang had hidden all or part of the train loot somewhere in the Ozark hills of Wayne County. Perhaps this cave was the place.

Excited about the prospect of instant wealth, the woodcutter headed back to the woods. This time he brought along a flashlight instead of an ax. After crawling a few yards into the cave, he came upon a sizable room. There he discovered what was later reported to have been a large bundle of paper money, a ‘hatful’ of old coins and a muzzleloading rifle. When he returned home and told the neighbor of his unusual find, rumor mills began to grind. The story spread, and big city news reporters, eager to get the story of Jesse James’ lost treasure, soon flocked to the scene.

A so-called reliable source claimed that the coins and currency taken from the cave amounted to more than $100,000 and that he had personally seen $10,000 in old gold coins in the woodcutter’s possession. A newspaper told of an armored vehicle parked in front of the man’s house, and adding even more interest to the unfolding drama was the reported arrival of two agents from the U.S. Treasury Department who had come to investigate the matter. All this created quite a stir, and the sleepy little village of Gads Hill, which had enjoyed so many years of peace and tranquility since the train robbery, found itself once again in the national spotlight.

The hubbub went on for several days; then, as quickly as the story had broken, it began to unravel. The woodcutter, it turned out, had not discovered Jesse James’ lost treasure after all, but only a crumbling book, a rusty old rifle with a rotten, worm-eaten stock and some 2-cent pieces (the oldest dated 1886, four years after Jesse’s death). He was surprised himself to learn he had found $100,000. ‘Only thing I ever told about,’ he said, ‘was finding the gun and a few coins.’ The poor fellow was apparently not to blame for the wild exaggeration. It was, as one newspaper put it, ‘merely the workings of normal backyard gossip.’

And so the story, like so many other debunked myths surrounding Jesse James, was laid to rest. On October 8, 1948, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat printed a final article that poked fun at the whole affair. Its headline appropriately read: ‘Jesse Fizzles Again.’

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This article was written by Ronald H. Beights and originally appeared in the June 2005 issue of Wild West.

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