Gun Control in the Old West

  In popular imagination, the Old West of the 1880s is often pictured as a lawless frontier where everyone carried a gun at all times. But for many Western towns trying to establish order and attract families, business, and investment, gun control was not only present--it was taken seriously.  Places like Dodge City, Tombstone, and Deadwood adopted local ordinances that restricted the carrying of firearms within town limits. Visitors were often required to check their weapons with the sheriff or at a saloon upon entering town, a practice that reflected a broader desire to reduce violence in rapidly growing communities.

 These measures weren't driven by abstract political ideology so much as practical necessity. Frontier towns were filled with a mix of cowboys, miners, merchants, and travelers, many of whom were armed and living in close quarters. Disputes could quickly escalate into deadly encounters if weapons were readily at hand. By enforcing gun restrictions in populated areas, local authorities aimed to prevent spur-of-the-moment violence, especially in saloons where alcohol and tempers mixed freely. Lawmen like Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson became known not just for gunfights, but for enforcing these rules and maintaining a semblance of peace.

 

For Western readers today, the history of gun control in the Old West offers a more nuanced picture than the myth suggests. Firearms were certainly a part of daily life on the frontier, especially for hunting, ranching, and self-defense in remote areas. Yet within town limits, many communities recognized the need for boundaries. Rather than representing a contradiction, this balance reflected a practical understanding of freedom and responsibility--one shaped by the realities of life in a developing and often unpredictable landscape. 

Till next time.

Sandra

 Available at Amazon 

Wyatt Earp

 

Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp (March 19, 1848 - January 13, 1929) was an American Lawman and gambler in the American West, including Dodge City, Deadwood, and Tombstone.

 In 1874, he arrived in Wichita, Kansas, where his reputed wife opened a brothel. He later went to work for the town as a peacekeeper. When he wasn't rehired, he left Wichita and followed his brother James to Dodge City. 

He met "Doc" Holiday in 1878 when he was in Texas tracking down an outlaw and credits Holiday for saving his life. 

In Tombstone, Earp was involved in the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral, during which lawmen killed three outlaw Cochise County Cowboys. While Wyatt is often depicted as the key figure in the shootout, his brother Virgil was both Deputy U.S. Marshal and Tombstone City Marshal that day and had considerable more experience in law enforcement as a sheriff, constable, and marshal than Wyatt did. Virgil made the decision to enforce a city ordinance prohibiting carrying weapons in town and to disarm the Cowboys. Wyatt was only a temporary assistant marshal to his brother at the time.

 Wyatt Earp's life was full of adventures and controversies, and his legacy continues to fascinate people to this day.

1. en.wikipedia.org

2. britannica.com

Do you recognize this man?

He worked at many professions from a brothel keeper, saloon owner, miner for gold and silver, teamster, buffalo hunter, boxing referee, and professional gambler to name a few. While widely known in the American Southwest, this cowboy spent his early life in Pella, Iowa. He ended up on the wrong side of the law after his first wife died before their child could be born.

 Perhaps it was his depression, perhaps his sorrow, but he began treading the dangerous down hill spiral of amassing a police record. From horse thief, jail escapee, to running a house of "ill fame", he found his name plastered in local papers with the nickname of " old offender" to the  "Peoria Bummer" all of which at that time meant a hustler or bum.

Still looking for a profession, he hope to bring himself out of the gutter by moving to Kansas. There he took on a common law wife and was appointed a constable on the police force. Despite his wife's occupation at a "Soiled Dove", he developed a reputation and earned respect as a solid lawman. This title was to come in handy later in life. Sadly, a fist fight with a political rival ended his tenure on the police force. Leaving his "wife" he found solace with his brothers on the right side of the law.

They moved from boom town to boom town, taking jobs of enforcing the law. In the year 1881 an incident in a boom town in Arizona would change his life forever. Ninety seconds would be all it took, but when the smoke cleared, one brother would be maimed another murdered and he would swear in a federal posse bent on revenge until the last of the outlaws in the gang known as the Cowboys was wiped out.

Still chasing a happier life, he moved from one gold or silver rush to another. From Nome, Alaska to Nevada, he tried to find happiness. Finally, he made his way to the hills of California and staked a claim in Vidal. There, he and his third and final common law wife, Josephine Marcus settled down to mind for riches in the winter and spend the summer in Los Angeles. He became friends with the likes of Tom Mix and other early movie cowboys. His exploits were put on film and later on early black and white TV.

On January 13th, 1920, he passed away peacefully leaving his modern day reputation as the Old West's toughest and deadliest gunman, who was never wounded in a shoot out. Who does this reputation belong too?

Wyatt Earp

 

Image found http://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.ii.020

Image found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyatt_Earp

TOMBSTONE: THE TOWN TOO TOUGH TO DIE?

If you’re stopping by Cowboy Kisses,  most likely it’s because you’re interested in the historic west.  And if you’re interested in the historic west, most likely you know a reasonable amount about the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Wyatt Earp and his brothers, Doc Holliday, and Tombstone, Arizona. Tombstone, of course, was made famous by that gunfight; had it not been for the O.K. Corral and Wyatt Earp, most likely Tombstone would have gone the way of many old mining towns and become a true ghost town, or possibly it would be some artists’ enclave like nearby Bisbee.  But the gunfight did take place, and it took place at a time when Tombstone was a thriving metropolis, as difficult as that is to envisage now.

If you need a quick refresher course on the gunfight behind the O.K. Corral and are reluctant to head to Wiki or grab a relevant issue of ‘True West’ magazine, let me briefly recount what happened.  At approximately 3 p.m. on Wednesday, October 26, 1881, town Marshal Virgil Earp along with brothers Wyatt (a former Kansas lawman from Dodge City) and Morgan, as well as pal Doc Holliday, faced down the brothers Ike and Billy Clanton, Frank and Tom McLaury, and Billy Claiborne, and had a shoot-out in the most historic 30 seconds of the Old West.  And why did this occur?  In 1881, tensions from the War Between the States hung on.  In Tombstone, antagonism between the lawmen—representing the Republican north, capitalists and upright townspeople—and the Cowboys (giving them a bad name much to my personal consternation!), who were mostly former Confederates and Democrats, not to mention cattle rustlers, all boiled over, along with personal animosities. Thirty bullets later, Billy Clanton and the McLaury brothers lay dead, three of the lawmen—not Wyatt—were wounded, and Ike Clanton the coward and Billy Claiborne had taken off. 

In the representation shown here, based on a sketch Wyatt drew some years before he passed, one can see at what close quarters the shoot-out took place. Ike Clanton is not represented because Wyatt refused to acknowledge the presence of the “coward.”  But whoever was there, those 30 seconds tossed Tombstone into eternal recognition.

So, what was Tombstone like at that time?  Was it worth the attention the gunfight seems to have merited?  Tombstone was then the county seat of Cochise County, created in February of that year out of part of Pima County, Territory of Arizona.  Settled in 1877, by 1879 it  was prospering and well on its way to producing the forty plus million dollars worth of silver bullion it would present.  From a population of around one hundred, it soared to over fourteen thousand, and with that populace came the amenities to entertain, feed, and service the people.  Night spots such as The Bird Cage vied with an opera house for the upper crust.  Dance halls and gambling joints, brothels, soiled doves’ cribs,  and one hundred ten saloons sat alongside a bowling alley, an ice cream parlor, a school, two banks and four churches.  Society was fluid:  a miner one day might be a millionaire the next.  And there were three newspapers. 

If you read the copy of The Tombstone Epitaph from the day after the shoot-out, the most interesting items are not necessarily the statements from so-called witnesses, but the advertisements in the margins that indicate the kind of town Tombstone was. Yes, there are things that we'd expect:  Tuttle’s Tombstone Corral with accommodation for 100 horses; Spagenberg’s Gunsmith and Locksmith; Risdon Iron and Locomotive Works for Engines and Boilers; the Tombstone Carriage Shop; Hibbard, Spencer & Bartlett Hardware; and Fish Bros. Wagon Company, along with the Arizona Mail and Stage Line; Watt & Tarbell Undertakers; and Mme. LeDeau’s, which asks you to “ask any man.” But there is also Pioneer Baking Powder, Mooney’s Fashion Saloon, 4-Paws Monster Railroad Circus,  a Tonsorial Palace, and Estey’s Pianos.

Of course, as the silver ran out, so did the population.  In 1929, the County Seat of Cochise moved to Bisbee where it is today, and Tombstone would have become one more true ghost town near the Mexican border—except for one thing, and we know what that was.  As I drove down from the ever-growing Tucson, through windswept open spaces punctuated by towns not much more than trailer settlements, the feeling that civilization was being left behind was intense.  Now that the main thoroughfare of Tombstone is pedestrianized, it more resembles what it once was, except for the different uses of the buildings.  The saloons are now family eateries with live music—and the one we attended, the Crystal Palace, had the worst live entertainment I’ve encountered anywhere, anytime.  The usual southwestern shops are there: native American jewelry mixed with western souvenirs.  And the fact that there is a six dollar charge to stand on the hallowed ground of the O.K. Corral, see their museum, and pick up a copy of the Tombstone Epitaph from the day after the shoot-out, rather detracts from the whole experience. 

But as the wind howled and moaned, banging saloon doors and sending signs clattering with ghostly whines, tumbleweed rolling down the dirt streets, and a stagecoach lurching through town, Tombstone stepped away from its Disney-like existence, and for one brief moment the desertion and silence of the residents' prior to the gunfight became real.  Maybe it is a ghost of itself, but Tombstone, for now, isn’t dead nor dying.

Interesting Wild West Facts - Susan Horsnell

Hi Everyone

Getting excited. It is just 10 days before hubby and I visit Texas. Cannot wait to see the historical sites around the state. My good friend Caroline Clemmons will be hosting us for a few days in Dallas/Fort Worth and I hear she has some interesting things planned. It will be our first visit to mainland USA and I'm very sure it won't be our last. For my post this week I thought I would share some interesting facts on the "Wild West" of years past.

Judge Roy Bean

Judge Roy Bean once killed a Mexican official in a dispute over a girl in California. A friend of the Mexican official hanged Bean; but, before he died, he was cut down by the contested damsel. Ever after, Bean was unable to turn his head due to the injury.

The first gold strike in the Old West was made by Jose Ortiz in 1832 south of Santa Fe, New Mexico, in what would quickly become the boom town of Delores.

Billy the Kid was born in New York City on September 17, 1859.

Established in 1827, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas is the oldest military post in continuous operation west of the Mississippi River.

The oldest human skeleton ever found in the Western Hemisphere was discovered in 1953 near Midland, Texas. It was first believed that the skeleton, the remains of a 30-year-old woman, was 10,000 years old. However, the latest estimates are that it is much older.

The term "red light district" came from the Red Light Bordello in Dodge City, Kansas. The front door of the building was made of red glass and produced a red glow to the outside world when lit at night. The name carried over to refer to the town's brothel district.

Clay Allison was described in a physician’s report as maniacal” with a personality where "emotional or physical excitement produces paroxysmal of a mixed character.”

Estimates of how many people lived in North America before the arrival of the European explorers vary from 8.4 million to 112 million. This population was divided into about 240 tribal groupings speaking an estimated 300 different languages.

Buffalo,which were strewn across the Great Plains after the mass buffalo hunts of 1870-1883, were bought by Eastern firms for the production of fertilizer and bone china. "Bone pickers” earned eight dollars a ton for the bones.

Around 1541, the present state of Texas was called Tejas, a Spanish version of the Caddo word meaning "allies."

Wyatt Earp

Wyatt Earp was indicted for horse theft in Van Buren, Arkansas on May 8, 1871. He escaped trial by jumping bail and fleeing to Kansas. 

Rumor has it that the tradition of spreading sawdust on the floors of bars and saloons started in Deadwood, South Dakota due to the amount of gold dust that would fall on the floor. The sawdust was used to hide the fallen gold dust and was swept up at the end of the night.

After serving more than twenty years in prison, Cole Younger got a job selling tombstones, worked for a while in a Wild West show with Frank James and died quietly in 1916 in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, where he was known as an elderly churchgoer.

 Wyatt Earp was neither the town marshal or the sheriff in Tombstone, Arizona at the time of the shoot-out at the O.K. Corral. His brother Virgil was the town marshal, who had temporarily deputized Wyatt, Morgan and Doc Holliday prior to the gunfight.

The Oregon Trail from Independence, Missouri to Fort Vancouver, Washington measured 2,020 miles. An estimated 350,000 emigrants took the trail but one out of seventeen would not survive the trip. The most common cause of death was cholera.

Harry Longabaugh became known as "the Sundance Kid" because he served a jail term for horse stealing in Sundance, Wyoming.

The Sundance Kid

Mike Fink was a keel boatman along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and an expert marksman. However, he loved his drink and was a known brawler. One of his favorite games was to shoot a mug of brew from the top of some fellow's head. However, on one night in 1823, he had drank so much that it didn't matter how good were his shooting skills. This time he missed and killed the guy who was wearing the mug on his head. In no time, the dead man's friends retaliated by killing Fink. For whatever reasons, his legend was being told for decades along with the likes of Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill.

Texas was the most active gunfighting state, with some 160 shoot-outs from the 1850's through the 1890's.

The Colt Peacemaker, the weapon that became known as "the gun that won the West” was a .45-caliber manufactured by Colt’s Fire Arms Manufacturing Company in Hartford, Connecticut in 1873. At the time it sold for $17.00.

Samuel Clemens, struck by silver fever, tried his hand at prospecting in the town of Unionville, Nevada in 1862. Having more luck in trading mining claims than actually producing silver, he wound up leaving the area. A short time latter Clemens, changes his name to Mark Twain and becomes one of the greatest writers of American Literature.

On December 21, 1876, Clay Allison shot and killed Deputy Sheriff Charles Faber at the Olympic Dance Hall in Las Animas, Colorado. If it weren’t for Allison purposely stomping on the feet of other dancers, the law probably would never have been called.

The Infamous Dalton Gang only operated for one year and five months, beginning with a train robbery in Wharton, Oklahoma on May 9, 1891 and ending at the shootout at Coffeyville, Kansas on October 5, 1892.

Though the term "stick 'em up" is widely used in Western films, it wasn't actually coined until the 1930's.

I hope you have enjoyed reading about some of the Wild Wests' history. 

Until next time, 

Stay Safe

Sue 

For info about my Western Romance books visit: http://horsnells.wix.com/susan--1

Thank you to Legends of America

Dodge City, Kansas

Dodge City Gathering

Dodge City. The name itself conjures up images of saloons, brothels and gun fights in the street. Wyatt Earp and his brothers come to mind. So do Bat Masterson and Bill Tilghman. But long before these men brought law and order to the notorious cowtown, Dodge City started out as nothing more than an army post.

Fort Dodge was established in 1865 along the Santa Fe Trail. The main objectives of the army was to keep wagon trains and the U.S. mail safe from attacking Indians and to serve as a supply base for detachments participating in the Indian wars. The Cheyenne, Kiowa and other tribes populated the area, as buffalo and other wild game were abundant. Six years later, at the foot of a hill west of the fort, Henry L. Sitler built a three-room sod home. Sitler was a cattle rancher and his home quickly became a twenty-four hour stopover for travelers and buffalo hunters.

George M. Hoover arrived shortly after Sitler and opened Dodge’s first business; a saloon. After Hoover, a group of businessmen from Forts Dodge, Riley and Leavenworth organized the Dodge City Town Company. The company began the planning and developing of the town. Originally, they named the settlement Buffalo City, but since a town with that name already existed, they changed the name to Dodge City. The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad arrived in September 1872 and Dodge grew rapidly in size and population over the next few years.

Buffalo hunters, railroad workers, soldiers and drifters came to town, packing the saloons, dance halls and brothels. Laws didn’t exist and the military had no jurisdiction. Gunfights abounded, with men dying in their boots; hence the need for a burial place. Boot Hill Cemetery was developed and remained in use until 1878. Before that, men were buried wherever a hole could be dug, or, if he had friends or money, he was buried in the post cemetery.

Buffalo Hide Yard 1878

Dodge City was known as the Buffalo Capital, until mass slaughters destroyed the herds. By 1875, the Buffalo were gone, and so was the source of income for local farmers who gathered the bones and sold them for profit. The bones were used to make china and fertilizer. Luckily, the cattle trade shifted from Ellsworth and Wichita to Dodge City, keeping Dodge from going belly-up. But along with thousands of Longhorn making their way to Dodge in a ten year span came more lawlessness in the form of cowboys. The mayor contacted Wyatt Earp, who was a lawman in Wichita at the time, and asked him for help, offering an unheard of salary of $250 per month. Wyatt took the job and hired four deputies to assist him; Bat Masterson, Charlie Basset, Bill Tilghman and Neal Brown. 

Peace Keepers

Wyatt Earp and his deputies assessed the layout of Dodge and the best course of action to bring law and order to the town. Earp initiated a ‘Deadline’ north of the railroad yards on Front Street. The area north of the deadline was mainly commercial business and it was his intent to keep this area quiet. South of the ‘Deadline’ consisted of saloons and brothels. A gun ordinance went into effect banning guns from being worn or carried. Those on the south side who didn’t cotton to the new ordinance carried on as usual.

The term ‘red light district’ sprung from here, as railroad men carried their red caboose lanterns at night to visit the brothels. With so many disobeying the new ordinance, Earp soon found his jail cells full.

Earp left Dodge for a while to track famed outlaw Dave Rudabaugh. When he returned, he was made marshal of Dodge City and asked the courts for more severe sentencing. He also organized a committee similar to modern day neighborhood watches to police the streets. Ed Masterson became the assistant marshal in June of 1876. His brother Bat became under-sheriff. In January 1878, Bat became the sheriff, and Wyatt Earp left Dodge in 1879. The Santa Fe rail line reached Santa Fe in 1880, bringing an end to the use of the Santa Fe Trail and to people traveling to Dodge. At the same time, the Indian tribes were housed on reservations and there was no further need for a military presence. Fort Dodge closed in 1882 and the cattle drives ceased in 1886. Today, Dodge City is home to approximately 30,000 people. 

The Motherlode: Mining the Miners by @JacquieRogers #western

Gold Fever

In the 1800s, people traveled west in droves, but not all those who went west were immigrants. The Forty-Niners were obsessed with finding a mountain of gold, then there came the Pike’s Peakers, and prospectors flocked to numerous gold and silver strikes all over the Western territories from Arizona to the Klondike. And right behind all of them were entrepreneurs whose sole agenda was mining the miners—making it rich. And quite a few of them did.

Who were these people? Levi Strauss and John Nordstrom made their fortunes in clothing and retail, as did many others. Many hoteliers, newspaper publishers, and freighters did well. Early on, lots of money went toward the gambling and (ahem) other social activities. Let’s talk about gambling.

Gambling

People who went west risked everything they owned as well as their lives to get there, so it’s only reasonable to expect that these risk-takers would be gamblers as well. Nearly everyone, male or female, of any age, would place a wager now and again.

Westerners bet on everything that moved—dogs, frogs, hogs—you name it. They made book on foot races with various handicaps, boat races (even a stick boat on a puddle on Main Street), sack races at the Sunday social, greased pig races, wild horse races . . . whatever they could think of, they did. They also bet on base-ball games (yes, it was hyphenated then), and nearly every other game you can think of.

Horseracing

In 1857, my g-g-grandfather (not sure on the number of greats), Moses Lock Alsup, took a string of racehorses and a small herd of cattle to California, near present day Santa Rosa. He sold his cattle for $40/head ($1,600 total), and raced his horses for a tidy payoff. He then sold all but his breeding stock, took his money, and went back to Missouri and bought most of the county. He made more money from the miners in one trip than most of the miners ever made.

Horseracing was one of the most popular sports. Nearly every festival or celebration featured a race. In the July 9, 1870, issue of The Owyhee Avalanche (Silver City, Idaho Territory), they reported:

THE FOURTH AT WAGONTOWN

A number of our citizens attended the races at Wagontown last Monday. Everything passed off in the most satisfactory manner. There were four races of a quarter of a mile each, as follows: LW Walker's chestnut horse and Jno Catalows's sorrel mare, for $50 a side, won by the latter. Second, Tim Shay's sorrel horse and Frenchman's roan filly, for $40 a side, won by Shay's horse. Third, Catalow's sorrel mare and Frenchman's sorrel horse, for $50 a side, Catalow's mare winner. Fourth, Jordan's black mare and Tom Walls' gray horse, for $45 a side, Jordan's mare winner.

That's pretty good money for 140 years ago, but a pittance compared to what went on in San Francisco, CA.

Gradually, as wealthy men made a hobby or a sideline of breeding horses, Western races became more carefully orchestrated, the crowds grew and betting flourished. Indeed, gambling and a day at the races became a virtually synonymous. And when Westerners got around to staging formal stakes races the prizes were sometimes much richer than those back East. In 1873 what was billed as "the richest race in the world" was run at Ocean View Park in San Francisco. The winner's purse was $20,000 paid in gold. In the same year New York's famous Belmont was worth only $5,200 and Maryland's Preakness a mere $1,800. ~ From: Gamblers of the Old West, p.200

Jefferson R. Smith II,
aka Soapy Smith

Then there were the gamblers and the bunco men, such as Jefferson Randolph Smith II, better known as Soapy Smith. He organized bunco gangs and worked confidence games all over the West, from Texas to Skagway, where he met his untimely end. He was most famous for his soap scam, where he would entice people to buy bars of soap by telling them there was money inside the wrapper. To get a better idea of how this works, check out the excellent website that’s run by his family where you can learn all about Soapy’s adventures. His great grandson, Jeff Smith, is a knowledgeable resource (a nice guy, too), and wrote the definitive biography on Soapy using primary sources. 

Poker Alice, Wyatt Earp, and nearly every other famous person from the Old West made money from the miners. Most were gamblers, but lawmen and cowhands were required to keep order in mining camps and to bring in beef to feed the men.

A name that’s not so famous but just as intriguing is Malinda Jenkins. This woman led quite a life, and most of her money was made from the profits of boom towns. She was born in Kentucky in 1848 and married young to a handsome man but ended up working her fingers to the bone to support him. Two husbands later, she’d traveled all over the West, including the Klondike, and finally settled in Idaho at the turn of the 20th Century. If you want to read about the opportunities for women in the West, her biography is an excellent source. Mrs. Jenkins had nothing to start with but a keen mind and a willingness to work hard, and ended up a prosperous businesswoman and landowner. At 80, she still played the ponies every day.

Gold and silver turned the American West into an enticement too strong to resist, but the real money came from the businesses that catered to these hearty souls’ needs.

Where the Old West really happened!

Much Ado About Marshals

Much Ado About Madams

Much Ado About Mavericks