Gunfights and general lawlessness were common in the frontier
cities of the American West. Tombstone and Dodge City are
legendary. But neither saw violence approaching that of Los Angeles
in the 1850s.
In his Reminiscences of a Ranger, Horace Bell reports that
"midnight raids and open day robbery and assassinations of
defenseless or unsuspecting Americans were of almost daily
occurrence" in southern California, a territory newly acquired from
Mexico. To combat this lawlessness, in 1853 the citizens of Los
Angeles formed a volunteer mounted police force known as the Los
Angeles Rangers. Under the command of Captain Alexander Hope, the
Rangers strove to keep the peace within the city, and they hunted
down bandits and murderers in the surrounding region, including
several connected with Joaquin Murrieta's band.
The life of a mounted ranger appealed to Horace Bell, a civilian
who later became an attorney and ran a newspaper. As John
Boessenecker says in the introduction to the book, Bell's memoir is
a history of early Los Angeles, an essential and highly
entertaining source for this period of the California Gold Rush.
With a sharp eye for detail, Bell sketches numerous pioneers,
politicians, military figures, and outlaws, and he vividly
describes riots and shootouts in the city streets and campaigns
against Indians and bandits.
General
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