In November 1900, five Wild Bunch outlaws, in their Sunday best, posed for Fort Worth, Texas, photographer John Swartz in what has become one of the most famous photos in Western history. Two of the subjects would be immortalized 69 years later in the Paul Newman–Robert Redford film “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”
“The Wild Bunch shares that rare kind of cult following in Western history enjoyed by such figures, events and places as George Armstrong Custer, the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and the Alamo,” co-authors Richard Selcer and Donna Donnell wrote in their December 2011 Wild West Magazine article “Last Word on the Famous Wild Bunch Photo.” “Historians frequently request the image as they churn out a never-ending stream of words about the gang.”
In 1999, the Smithsonian named the “Fort Worth Five” photo one of the iconic images of the American West. Can you spot Butch and Sundance? Hint: They don’t look much like Newman and Redford.
Answer: The outlaws pictured in this famous photo are (from left) the Sundance Kid, Will Carver, Ben Kilpatrick, Harvey Logan and Butch Cassidy.
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