|
Showing 1 - 5 of
5 matches in All Departments
In 1854, the United States acquired the roughly 30,000-square-mile
region of present-day southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico
from Mexico as part of the Gadsden Purchase. This new Southern
Corridor was ideal for train routes from Texas to California, and
soon tracks were laid for the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe rail
lines. Shipping goods by train was more efficient, and for
desperate outlaws and opportunistic lawmen, robbing trains was
high-risk, high-reward. The Southern Corridor was the location of
sixteen train robberies between 1883 and 1922. It was also the
homebase of cowboy-turned-outlaw Black Jack Ketchum's High Five
Gang. Most of these desperadoes rode the rails to Arizona's Cochise
County on the US-Mexico border where locals and lawmen alike hid
them from discovery. Both Wyatt Earp and Texas John Slaughter tried
to clean them out, but it took the Arizona Rangers to finish the
job. It was a time and place where posses were as likely to get
arrested as the bandits. Some of the Rangers and some of
Slaughter's deputies were train robbers. When rewards were offered
there were often so many claimants that only the lawyers came out
ahead. Southwest Train Robberies chronicles the train heists
throughout the region at the turn of the twentieth century, and the
robbers who pulled off these train jobs with daring, deceit, and
plain dumb luck! Many of these blundering outlaws escaped capture
by baffling law enforcement. One outlaw crew had their own caboose,
Number 44, and the railroad shipped them back and forth between
Tucson and El Paso while they scouted locations. Legend says one
gang disappeared into Colossal Cave to split the loot leaving the
posse out front while they divided the cash and escaped out another
entrance. The antics of these outlaws inspired Butch Cassidy and
the Sundance Kid to blow up an express car and to run out guns
blazing into the fire of a company of soldiers.
In 1861, war between the United States and the Chiricahua seemed
inevitable. The Apache band lived on a heavily traveled Emigrant
and Overland Mail Trail and routinely raided it, organized by their
leader, the prudent, not friendly Cochise. When a young boy was
kidnapped from his stepfather's ranch, Lieutenant George Bascom
confronted Cochise even though there was no proof that the
Chiricahua were responsible. After a series of missteps, Cochise
exacted a short-lived revenge. Despite modern accounts based on
spurious evidence, Bascom's performance in a difficult situation
was admirable. This book examines the legend and provides a new
analysis of Bascom's and Cochise's behavior, putting it in the
larger context of the Indian Wars that followed the American Civil
War.
The first full-length biography of the Western legend Tom Jeffords,
immortalized by Jimmy Stewart in 1950's Broken Arrow. This book
tells the true story of a man who headed West drawn by the lure of
the Pike's Peak Gold Rush in 1858; made a life for himself over a
decade as he scouted for the army, prospected, became a business
man; then learned the Apache language and rode alone into Cochise's
camp in order to negotiate peaceful passage for his stagecoach
company. In his search for the real story of Jeffords, Cochise, and
the parts they played in mid-nineteenth century American history
and politics, author Doug Hocking reveals that while the myths
surrounding those events may have clouded the truth a bit, Jeffords
was almost as brave and impressive as the legend had it.
|
You may like...
Higher Truth
Chris Cornell
CD
(1)
R184
R149
Discovery Miles 1 490
Barbie
Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling
Blu-ray disc
R266
Discovery Miles 2 660
|