No short cuts across high saddles above Dunton

 Hard work may never pay off

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

The stories grow like a bad weed in high altitude sunshine on the mountain saddles above Dunton.
If you look down the slopes below — like the miners and outlaws and other desperados of the time — you might understand that hardship, isolation, heartbreak — and realize that hard work may never pay off.
Not far from here, at the turn of the last century,  Matt Warner and his accomplice, known then as Butch Cassidy, (his given name was Robert Leroy Parker) walked into the San Miguel Valley Bank.
Warner pulled the teller over his desk, threatening him with death. Parker filled a bag with cash, eventually calculated to be $20,750. That measures up to more than half -million dollars in today’s currency when adjusted for inflation.
Like Parker, your might have had a bad taste in your mouth and felt mistreated in general.  Perhaps you would come to the conclusion that there might be shortcuts.
"The young man who would become Butch Cassidy was hired to pack ore onto mules and bring the valuable materials from the mines high in the mountains around Telluride down to the mills," writes Stephen Elliott of the Telluride News in 2015.
"Parker was keeping a colt of his on a local rancher’s property, and eventually he decided to remove it from the ranch. After Parker took his colt from the property, the ranch owner accused him of stealing the animal, and he was arrested and tried for the crime in Montrose. He was eventually acquitted but left Telluride to find work on ranches around Wyoming and Montana, until he returned to the box canyon a few years later to begin his life of crime."
Well some might argue about the timing of such a watershed moment. But it is possible that a young Leroy Parker, high on that ridge or some other, stared down at Rico on one side, and Dunton to the northwest, and formulated a plan for an easier, or at least more exciting way to make a living.
He wasn't going to scratch around in a hole, pack busted rocks up the hillsides, or labor arm-deep in blood, cutting meat all day in the butcher shop.
From that ridge, he could have probably seen the Emma, the Smuggler and the American mines.
He might have even spied Joe Roscio, who  arrived in Dunton in the 1880s from Minnesota. Roscio mined on the West Fork while federal troops were still busy chasing off Ute warriors who called the area home, or at least the equivalent of the grocery store.
The Smuggler, a tipple operation, was built on the steep slope on the shady side of the river. Roscio and his wife had at least four children, including boys Joe, Jr., Chuck, and Emilio (Mello).
They mined and survived up there in the high lonesome by also trapping, logging and supplying other miners. They rented cabins, operated a bar and lodge, and reportedly charged a nickel to use the hot springs.
Young Parker, no stranger to the possibility of fun and entertainment of the region, no doubt knew of the operation at the local hot spot. And he was prone to enjoy a leisurely life.
After their first bank job in Telluride, they made a beeline out of town notes Stephen Elliott.
"Warner, Parker and one or two other accomplices then headed west out of Telluride on horseback, urging their horses into a gallop and firing their revolvers as a warning to any would-be pursuers as they left town. The group crested Keystone Hill, a few miles west of Telluride, where a horse relay was awaiting them, one of several relay points manned by friends who were given a share of the stolen money in exchange for their assistance in the getaway," Elliot wrote in 2015.
Warner took credit for having the idea to rob the bank. Both riders with a regional reputation for winning horse races, Warner said he approached his friend and fellow racer Butch Cassidy — and then, his own brother-in-law Tom McCarty. According to his version, Butch was excited by the prospect, while Tom was more reluctant. After riding into town and up to the bank, Warner says he placed his gun under the teller’s nose, while Cassidy gathered the cash, and Tom McCarty held the horses outside.
Perhaps because it was their first bank job, the inexperienced outlaws led the teller outside with his hands up, and in the process, alerted the entire town.
After firing a few shots to back off the crowd, the three or four outlaws, made a beeline out of town, eventually ending up in the mountains near Mancos. Running so fast that they left the fresh horses behind, they ran into one of their former employers, Harry Adsit, who later helped the posse identify them and tell the pursuing group what direction they were headed.
Interestingly enough, Telluride Town Marshall, Jim Clark later confessed to the Gunnison County Sheriff to being involved — by not being involved.
Clark reportedly told the Sheriff he received $2200 of the stolen money as payment for being out of town during the robbery and later acquired one of the horses used in the robbery.
Certain accounts speculate that the two horse racing friends, and now, bank robbers, along with McCarty and perhaps additional accomplices, changed horses in the Cortez area (perhaps even at Longabaugh ranch south of Cortez, home of Harry Longabaugh’s father. Harry, (a.k.a. ‘The Sundance Kid”) would later befriend Cassidy and famously ride with the “Wild Bunch,” in Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Texas and New Mexico.
The Roscios sold Dunton in 1974 to a group of investors from Telluride and the East Coast. Dunton clintele morphed from local sheepherders, valley ranchers, reservation workers, bikers, and hippies playing nude volleyball games in high-altitude surroundings — to high-dollar euro tourists and film stars.
In the 1990s, a group of German Chemical company executives and other European investors affiliated with Christoph Henkel, purchased the little frontier village.
"The interior of each cabin was reborn as a piece of art in its own right -- a magazine stylist's collage — created mostly by Katrin Bellinger Henkel, Christoph's wife," according to the New York Time's piece.
The Henkel family radically transformed Dunton from its rough and ready beginnings to an exclusive resort with pricing North of $1,000 per night.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the drafty old cabins with unchinked logs reportedly suffered from hard use by "outlaw" motorcycle gangs, careless hippies,  and a severe skunk infestation — not to mention party-focused local high-school kids and other miscreants.
In early January 2005,  a New York Times travel piece by Anne Goodwin, described how the Henkel family transformed the resort with museum quality art and Americana to help fetch those bank-robber hotel rates.
Goodwin quoted Tyson Horner, assistant general manager of the place at the time.

"Did you catch those names?" Mr. Horner's eyebrows arched as his practiced index finger nimbly found a prominent "Butch Cassidy," and just below it, a smallish "Sundance."

"Come on," I said. "That's got to be a prank."

"Well," he pulled on the word, grinning broadly, "they're not sayin,' but rumor has it they holed up here in 1889, after they robbed the Telluride bank — their first heist."

Only problem with that, is that it was not likely Cassidy's (Parker's) first legal transgression. He had been suspected of rustling cattle since his teen years in Circleville, Utah, and he was more likely going by another name, like George Cassidy, Tom Gillis, James Ryan, Santiago Ryan, Santiago Maxwell, J.P. Maxwell, James Lowe, Santiago Lowe, George Ingerfield.
And as far as being associated with the Sundance Kid, there also was no record that the two men were associated until later. Though they could have been.
Maybe the Dunton bar has 'Roy Parker' carved in it? Or Harry Alonzo, or Frank Boyd, as Sundance was prone to use as an alias?

Robert Leroy Parker did do a prison stretch in the Wyoming Territorial Prison from 1894-1896 for stealing horses. And in 1887, Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, a.k.a. the Sundance Kid, was sentenced to 18 months in the Sundance, Wyoming jail, for stealing a slow horse.
No evidence suggests that met before Parker was released from prison. But the two incarceration locations are several hours apart — by fast horse.

Perhaps bank robbers did take a short cut along the West Fork of the Dolores River, change to faster horses, and did briefly hide out in Dunton.
Perhaps carving their names in history, and the wooden bar. 

But what names did they carve? It is going to take hard work, hardship, and perhaps isolation and heartache, that may never pay off —before we ever know for sure. 

In the meantime, stories grow like a bad weed in high altitude sunshine on the mountain saddles above Dunton.

Photo Information:
West Dolores Hotel and Bathing House Sept. 18, 1887. Men, women and children in front of the hot springs. Photographed by T.J. McKee. Denver Public Library.

Dunton - Smuggler Mine: Creator: Wolle, Muriel Sibell, Broken lumber and timbers mark the site of the Smuggler Mine, Is Part Of WH906. Muriel Sibell Wolle papers, 1926-1976 Subject Dunton (Colo.); Abandoned mines--Western History and Genealogy Dept., Denver Public Library.

Dunton - Emma Mine: Creator: Wolle, Muriel Sibell, Western History and Genealogy Dept., Denver Public Library, Dunton - 1950 Creator Wolle, Muriel Sibell, 1898-1977 Date 1950 Donor Muriel Sibell Wolle estate, 1977 Summary View in Dunton (Dolores County), Colorado; shows a harp switch handle at a wye in the ore car tracks; dilapidated buildings and mountains are on one side, a sheer cliff is on the other.

Dunton - 1950 : Creator: Dunton (Dolores County), Colorado; shows a harp switch handle at a wye in the ore car tracks; dilapidated buildings and mountains are on one side, a sheer cliff is on the other.  ###

 

Chasin' alias: Now, was that Smith, or Jones?

Thinking about identity, and alias, and outlaws,  and how hard it was to keep track of people before the internet and search engines.

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

"Alias Smith and Jones" was a western TV series that originally aired on ABC from January 1971 to January 1973, starring Pete Duel as Hannibal Heyes and Ben Murphy as Jedediah "Kid" Curry, outlaw cousins who were trying to reform. Duel's character was supposedly the brains of the operation, and Murphy's part provided a fast draw and muscle.
The show was inspired, at least in part, by success of the 1969 blockbuster film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. The names "Smith" and "Jones" actually originated from a comment in the 1969 movie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, when, prior to one of their final hold-ups, the characters are outside a bank in Bolivia and Sundance turns to Butch and says: "I'm Smith and you're Jones."
The real "Kid Curry," Harvey Logan, was actually a member of the real 'Wild Bunch' comprised the real Butch Cassidy, Sundance Kid, and other notable outlaws of the early 1900s.
Logan, contrary to his TV counterpart, was a cold-blooded killer, reportedly killing as many as nine law enforcement officers, and several others.
Unfortunately, actor Pete Duel died of a self-inflicted gun shot on New Years Eve in 1971. The series replaced him with another actor, and continued for another 17 episodes, but it never recovered. Fans, I guess, didn't buy the identity switch.
I've have been thinking about identity, and alias, and outlaws, as it relates to the old West and such, and the real Kid Curry, Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid, and how hard it was to keep track of people before the internet and search engines.
A few weeks ago, when I visited the Wyoming Territorial Prison, of which Butch Cassidy was a short term guest, I noticed that amazingly enough, criminals such as Cassidy were not always completely honest in what they told prison officials.
From Wyoming Territorial Prison Records, Processing Card: George Cassidy, prisoner No. 187, Alias "Butch" Cassidy, Crime: Grand Larceny, Age: 27, Height: 5'9", Weight: 165 pounds., Build: Well-Built, Hair: Dark Flaxen, Eyes: Blue, Complexion: Light, Born: New York City, Occupation: Cowboy, Received from: Fremont County, Sentenced: July 15, 1894, Remarks: Has no wife or parents, features regular, small deep-set eyes, good conduct, Two cut scars on back of head, has a small red scar under left eye, red mark on left side of back, small brown mole on calf of left leg, a well-built young man.
Basically, on processing card, the convict lied.
Cassidy claims to have been born in New York and his parents are deceased. Cassidy was in fact, born to Anne and Max Parker in Utah and was the eldest of 13 children: and called Robert Leroy Parker. Brother Dan Parker, inmate #164, was held at the Territorial Prison in 1890 for robbing the United States Postal Service.
Nothing really new here, but I had encountered it before.  
Sutton's Law is related to legendary 1930s outlaw Willie Sutton's often quoted (and probably falsely attributed) response to a reporter who asked why he robbed banks.
"Because that's where the money is."
I have wondered out loud before why that law didn't seem to apply for the "Wild Bunch" and the Cripple Creek District.
As a kid growing up in southwestern Colorado, nearly every wide spot in the road down there claimed some connection to the heralded outlaws. With the gang holding up the San Miguel Valley Bank in Telluride, supposedly robbing the train at Stoner, holing up at Dunton Hot Springs, and several associated robberies in the Grand Junction, Delta and Vernal, Utah, areas, in addition to Harry "Sundance" Longabaugh's stint working on his uncle's ranch near Cortez as just some of the historically possible links - the stories were difficult to dispute.
Then there is the haunting photograph of the five dapperly dressed fellows at the turn of the century, three seated, two standing behind. From left to right: Harry A. Longabaugh, a.k.a. "The Sundance Kid," William Carver, Ben Kilpatrick, a.k.a. "The Tall Texan," Harvey Logan, a.k.a. "Kid Curry" and Robert Leroy Parker, a.k.a. "Butch Cassidy." The photo was taken Nov. 21, 1900, at John Swartz's studio in Fort Worth, Texas, near the Hell's Half Acre section of town the gang was known to frequent, and probably has appeared on more "wanted" posters than any photo in the last century.
But the outfit is given credit for robbing trains, mines, banks and other businesses all over the West - Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah, Montana, South Dakota, Arizona, Texas, Nevada and Oregon. And their height of operation corresponds perfectly with the Cripple Creek District's heyday. Why didn't the "Wild Bunch" knock over any easy targets in the wild district?
It was where the money was. Once I speculated that maybe the answer was Love.
According to the information submitted to the Colorado Archives by the Pikes Peak Genealogical Society and posted by USGenWeb, "Love was the last community to officially debut in the Cripple Creek District, acquiring a post office in 1894." Research by Jan MacKell indicated that village located at the far east end of the district was made up of ranchers, a few miners, sawmill workers and maybe dairy workers. But, notes the archive project, "Love was remote enough, however, that members of outlaw Butch Cassidy's notorious Wild Bunch also felt secure in procuring a hideout there shortly after the community was founded."
Not only is that possible, I would guess, with the amount of money flowing around these parts at that time, it would be silly for an outlaw not to locate nearby.
Jan MacKell, who served for years as the director of the Cripple Creek District Museum, set me straight.
“You referenced something I had written about it. Well alas, further research revealed that the Bob Lee I found in Love was not the Bob Lee of the Wild Bunch. (Bob was a cousin to Harvey Logan and was implicated in the 1899 robbery at Wilcox, Wyoming - the one where they blew the train car to smithereens). Still, the Wild Bunch did hang around in these parts, particularly after the robbery, and Bob Lee was arrested at the Antlers Saloon (formerly Uncle Sam's Casino) in March of 1900. Just thought you would want to know.”
Of course I would, and I asked about where her information originated.
“Some of it came from Pinkerton files and other came from books about the wild bunch, I had many sources when I researched this. The Pinkerton files are tricky - some have been lost, some are open to the public and some are closed files. I got some information from Wyoming since that is where the Wilcox robbery was. J. Maurice Finn was Bob Lee's lawyer and a newspaper account I read had him huffing and puffing all over the courtroom. Funny to picture.”
Indeed it is.
And while I was in the speculation mode, I have always wondered about whether Etta Place (Harry Longabaugh, a.k.a. Sundance kid's love interest) might really be Ann or Josie Bassett as some historians have postulated. The Bassetts, of the Brown's Hole area in Northern Colorado and Utah and famous for their interaction with Tom Horn, had numerous connections to the gang, but for whatever reason, have never been definitively linked and most discount the possibility. The first photo above is Ann Bassett and the second is image of Longabaugh and Place taken in New York.
Incidentally,  MacKell is the author of several books about rough and tumble times in the mining districts including “Brothels, Bordellos and Bad Girls,” and has a new title scheduled to appear in March called “Red Light Women of the Rocky Mountains,” but I guess that is all together a different kind of “love.”
Additional speculation about who Etta Place was, is also intriguing. Others sources suggest that Etta Place may have in fact been Laura Bullion, who was a member of the gang. For several years in the 1890s, she was romantically involved with outlaw Ben Kilpatrick ("The Tall Texan"), a bank and train robber and an acquaintance of her father. In 1901, Bullion was convicted of robbery and sentenced to five years in prison for her participation in the Great Northern train robbery. She was released in 1905 after serving three years and six months of her punishment.
Most experts agree that Butch and Sundance probably met Etta at a bordello around 1900, probably run by Fannie Porter, according to Tony Hays.
"Near unanimous consensus among researchers is that Butch and Sundance met Etta at Fannie Porter’s brothel in San Antonio sometime in 1900," he said.
"The Pinkerton Agency, which had a strong interest in Etta, described her as attractive, speaking with an educated tone.  Estimates of her birth year range from 1878 to 1882 or 1883.  Rumors suggest that she was a cousin of Longabaugh’s since Longabaugh’s mother was a Place.  Speculation is that she and Sundance had met sometime around 1900," Hays says.
"The last recorded appearance by Etta was in summer of 1909 in San Francisco, the year after Butch and Sundance were reportedly killed in a gun battle with Argentinian soldiers.  Indeed, there are those researchers who say that Etta died in South America as well.  But a woman of Etta’s description attempted to secure documents declaring Sundance dead. She was unsuccessful, and  the woman known as Etta Place rode off into the sunset."
Hays searched the census information and found Fannie Porter, running a “boarding house.”
"Fannie, herself little more than a girl in 1900, claimed to be of British extraction. The birthdates did not help all that much. Of the five girls in Fannie’s “boarding house,” all were born in or around 1878-80.  One girl in the household intrigued me beyond the others.  Twenty-two year old Madaline Wilson appears in the census immediately beneath Madam Fannie. Like Fannie, she is listed as of English birth, immigrating to the United States in 1884 when she was six. Now here’s where the conjecture has to come in.  It is quite possible that she had changed her name, but does that dictate that she would have changed her date of birth, country of origin, and date of immigration?" Hays asked.
And a British accent, tempered by 16 years in America, might be described as “refined,” he speculated.  
And, Madaline Wilson disappears after the 1900 census, when Etta was in her period of historical significance as the historians would say.
Of course, there was a  bunch of second-guessing on whether Butch and Sundance had actually been killed in Bolivia. Misidentification had happened before, as early as 1898, when the Salt Lake Herald on May 17, 1898, reported "Butch Cassidy is still alive," after first reporting he had been killed in Price, Utah.
 "Sheriff J. H. Ward of Evanston, Wyoming, who was probably the best posted man in the inter mountain states upon criminal matters, reached Price the morning of May 16, 1898, in response to a telegram calling him there to identify the men in jail, and the corpse supposed to be that of Cassidy. Sheriff Ward for 13 years past had been a sheriff in Wyoming, and during that time had Cassidy in his jail for three months and was with him daily," reported the paper.
"On inspecting the body, Sheriff Ward positively asserted that it was not Cassidy, and that while the complain and build of the men were very similar, the body in no other particular resembled Cassidy, and bore none of the battle scars of the famous robber. Sheriff Ward was of the opinion that the body was that of Bob Culp, Alias Red Bob, a notorious cattle thief, from Wyoming. Cassidy was in jail awaiting trial for horse tearing, and a close description was made by Sheriff Ward of all his peculiar marks, and he was absolutely positive that this was not the man," the paper said. But Parker, Longabaugh, Logan and the others, for whom history has had a devil of a time keeping track of anyway, likely were among the neighbors next door.
But we may never know because Butch might have been going by George Cassidy, Tom Gillis, James Ryan, Santiago Ryan, Santiago Maxwell, J.P. Maxwell, James Lowe, Santiago Lowe, George Ingerfield. And Sundance maybe he took up the name Harry Alonzo, Harry Place, Enrique Brown, H.A. Brown, Frank Smith, J.E. Ebaugh, J.E. Thibadoe, Frank Jones, Frank Bozeman, Harry Brown or Frank Boyd.
 Kid Curry also had a reputation of loving and leaving. Reports said he would often return from a train or bank robbery, get drunk and lay up with prostitutes until his share of the take was gone. Numerous prostitutes would name him as the father of various "love childs" that sometimes were referred to as "Curry Kids." Some sources credit Kid Curry with as many as eighty-five children, though the real number was probably closer to five or six.
To complicate things on the Kid Curry front, in addition to the Wild Bunch, the Kid, Harvey Logan, also rode with Sam Ketchum, who was the brother of Tom "Black Jack" Ketchum and Ezra Lay.
Also muddying the water, was the fact that Curry (Logan) liked to hide out in San Antonio, Texas.
While there he met prostitute Della  Moore (also known as Annie Rogers or Maude Williams), with whom he became romantically involved. At the time of their meeting, she was working in Madame Fannie Porter's brothel, which of course, was a regular hideout for the Wild Bunch gang. In October 1901, Della Moore was arrested in Tennessee for passing money tied to an earlier robbery involving Curry. The gunman is credited shortly afterwards with killing two policemen in Knoxville in a shootout and escape on Dec. 13, 1901.
On June 7, 1904, Kid Curry was tracked down by a posse outside of what is now Parachute, Colorado. Curry and two others had robbed a train  and they stole fresh horses owned by Roll Gardner and a neighbor. Gardner and the neighbor set out after them and  joined up with a posse and continued tracking, caught up the outlaws, who then shot Gardner's and his neighbor's horses from under them. Gardner found cover while his neighbor started running. Kid Curry took aim at the neighbor and Gardner shot Curry. The wounded Curry then fatally shot himself in the head to avoid capture. The other two robbers escaped.
But even in death, nothing is for sure. Rumors persist that Curry was not killed in the fire fight, and was misidentified, having actually departed for South America with Butch Cassidy and Sundance. Noted Pinkerton agent Charlie Siringo, who had pursued Logan for years, resigned Pinkerton's shortly thereafter, believing they got the wrong man.
Robert Parker's sister (and others in the family as well) swears her brother visited the family in 1925 for a family reunion. Some say he lived in Pacific Northwest for years, after going straight.
Actor Ben Murphy, went on to play many different characters since his stint as "Kid Curry" in the TV show "Alias Smith and Jones."

Photos from top, to bottom:
No. 1:
 Comparison of Ann Basset to Etta Place.

No. 2:
The Wild Bunch, From left to right: Harry A. Longabaugh, a.k.a. "The Sundance Kid," William Carver, Ben Kilpatrick, a.k.a. "The Tall Texan," Harvey Logan, a.k.a. "Kid Curry" and Robert Leroy Parker, a.k.a. "Butch Cassidy." The photo was taken Nov. 21, 1900, at John Swartz's studio in Fort Worth, Texas.

No. 3:
Ben Murphy as Jedediah "Kid" Curry, and Pete Duel as Hannibal Heyes in "Alias Smith and Jones."

No. 4:
Sundance Kid and Etta Place in New York before they headed to South America .


No. 5
George "Butch" Cassidy, Wyoming Territorial Prison.

No. 6:
Anne and Max Parker, Robert Leroy Parker's (Butch's) parents.

No. 7:
Kid Curry (Harvey Logan) and Della Moore.

No. 8:
Laura Bullion's Pinkerton mug shot.

No. 9:
Paul Newman and Robert Redford as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.