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Wild West Magazine
Judge Roy Bean picked the pockets of everyone who entered his barroom court in west Texas. The legendary saga of Roy Bean began the day he was hanged from a poplar tree in California. Bean had been jailed in San Diego for attempted murder...
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Wild West Magazine
Wichita, Dodge City and Leadville employed a variety of novel tactics to keep gun-toting riffraff from disturbing the peace…sometimes the tactics actually worked. When Sam Botts, a recent addition to the Wichita police, tried to arrest a...
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Wild West Magazine
The West was wild, but plenty of public and private law agencies tried to tame it. Federal Marshals Town marshals and deputies are not to be confused with their federal namesakes. Appointed by the U.S. president, U.S. marshals enforced...
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Wild West Magazine
Settlers in places where lawmen were few and far between often enforced their own rules of justice. Justice was often a matter of self-help for settlers in the Old West. Take this small mid-1880s happening out in No Man’s Land, the...
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Wild West Magazine
Through the Eyes of his Daughter Eva. Chris Evans was a brutal, quick-tempered outlaw who robbed trains and never hesitated to spill blood. California newspapers delighted in running stories about him and his primary partner in crime, John...
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Wild West Magazine
The WWHA has broadened its Western horizons. In the world of research about outlaws and lawmen of the Old West, there has been division in recent years. Some individuals belonged to the National Association of Outlaw and Lawman History...
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Wild West Magazine
But his time with the famous outlaws was short-lived. Within weeks of a train robbery at a spot called Rocky Cut, near Otterville, Missouri, James-Younger Gang member Hobbs Kerry was behind bars. The 23-year-old outlaw was arrested in...
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Wild West Magazine
John Hancock signed his death warrant that day. In April 1897, John Hancock and Winifred “Winny” Myers, along with Myers’ 6-year-old son, set out from Perris, California, for Salt Lake City, Utah, in a miserable excuse for an outfit...
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Wild West Magazine
The Texas Ranger was El Paso’s first real lawman. Before he arrived in El Paso, Mark Ludwick had been a farmhand, artist, harness maker and boiler operator. Standing 5-foot-6, with brown hair, hazel eyes and an unassuming countenance, he...
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Wild West Magazine
No matter how many murders and robberies he actually committed, California’s most notorious bandit cast a wide shadow on the gold rush. But it is hard to catch a shadow. Like the American Forty-Niners, Joaquín Murrieta came to...
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Wild West Magazine
The company trafficked in gold dust and mail. When Wells Fargo (Wells, Fargo and Company) established its express and banking business in the California gold country in July 1852, it inadvertently inspired two additional enterprises. As...
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Wild West Magazine
They did deliver a head, but was it the right one? When gold was first discovered in California, more foreigners than Americans worked the claims. Most were from the Mexican state of Sonora, including Joaquín Murrieta. Needing funds and...
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Wild West Magazine
Doc Holliday’s reputation was forged in blood in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, but his legend grew in Colorado, thanks to a pestiferous con man named Perry Mallon. Perry Mallon approached Doc Holliday for the first time during the second...
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Wild West Magazine
His opponent was a disoriented, hair-trigger saloon owner. It was a close-quarters gunfight between lawman and killer—the kind of sudden, violent exchange that bears all the hallmarks of a classic Old West shootout. And though the...
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Wild West Magazine
The Rules With No Name by Bryan Ansell, Foundry Publications, Nottingham, U.K., 2008, $84. This tabletop game (no electronics required) centers on miniature gunslingers and a rulebook to govern play. To start, opponents need at least...
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Wild West Magazine
The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp: The Complete Season One, 1955–1956 2009, Infinity Entertainment Group and Falcon Picture Group, five disks, 15 hours, $39.98. Wyatt Earp was about more than just Dodge City and Tombstone....
