When this photograph was taken in Deadwood, South Dakota, during the summer of 1877, Jack McCall had already been hanged for killing the notorious lawman Wild Bill Hickok. McCall had been found “not guilty” at his first trial, held at the Deadwood Theatre in 1876, but that local ruling was invalidated since the Black Hills was under federal government jurisdiction. He was found “guilty” at the second trial. Eyewitness George Shingle’s testimony was particularly damaging; this photo shows his saloon, which he opened in April 1877.
- Courtesy Deadwood Public Library Centennial Archives -
Colorado Charlie Utter (at right) and Arapaho Joe add a headstone to Wild Bill Hickok’s Deadwood grave in 1877. Two years later, Hickok was reinterred at Mount Moriah Cemetery, where his grave mates became Calamity Jane, in 1903, and Potato Creek Johnny, in 1943.
– Courtesy Deadwood Public Library –
Lt. George M. Wheeler ‘s survey team camped at the mouth of Black Canyon, the future site of Hoover Dam, on his expedition up the Colorado River in 1871.
– Courtesy Library of Congress –
As U.S. Army wife Martha Summerhayes revealed in her published memoirs, Vanished Arizona, she traveled with a derringer for protection. She didn’t mention the brand, but she quite possibly could have been carrying a Southerner as these spur-trigger single-shooters were produced between 1867 and 1873, one year before she traveled with her husband to his new post in Arizona Territory.
– True West Archives –
During the June 1893 Battle of Stone Corral, near Visalia, California, notorious train robber John Sontag’s stomach and shoulder wounds were so bad, he tried to kill himself by firing a shot into his own head, only making his misery worse. Sontag, surrounded below by lawmen and citizen possemen, was moved to the jail in Fresno, where he died on July 3, 1893, shortly after his 32nd birthday. California outlaw historian John Boessenecker identified the posse for us: (from left) Samuel Stingley, H.L. Rapelje, Luke Hall, George Witty, William English, Tom Burns, U.S. Marshal George Gard and journalists Jo P. Carroll and Harry Stuart. Rapelje, Burns and Gard participated in the gunfight; the fourth officer involved, Fred Jackson, was wounded and is missing from the photo.
– True West archives –
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