Stagecoach Robbery and Missing Gold By Donna Schlachter – with giveaway!

Sometimes real life can be stranger than any story we could make up, and one of the biggest solved yet still mysterious stagecoach robberies in history is an example of such.

Monitor stagecoach had 5/16" steel armor and loopholes for rifles

In September 1878, at Canyon Springs Stagecoach station, near Deadwood, Dakota Territory, an infamous outlaw known as Lame Johnny, concocted a scheme to steal the payroll and gold from the Homestake Mine.

The mine sent its valuables aboard an armored stage known as the “Monitor”, specially built for bullion and payroll shipments, complete with loopholes for guns and the treasure box bolted to the floor.

Called Lame Johnny because of a deformed foot, he’d tried his hand at living legit, but cowboying wasn’t in his cards. He headed to Deadwood and gained election as a deputy, but honest work didn’t appeal to him. He tried prospecting, then got a job with the Homestake Mine as bookkeeper. Fired when somebody recognized him from his horse rustling days in Texas, he escaped and returned to a life of crime.

He formed up a gang of at least four like-minded men, and they quickly gained a reputation as horse thieves and stagecoach bandits. Because of his experience with the company, he knew the stage schedule, and by the time it pulled into the Canyon Springs station, the attendant was already incapacitated. Caught off guard, the occupants of the stage were fired upon, one killed and two critically injured. After shooting back at the bandits, one guard ran for help.

The gang dragged the Monitor into the trees and apparently had little trouble prying open the supposedly theft-proof treasure box and transferring the contents, (see list below) loading the loot into a wagon in about two hours. The gang then split up and disappeared into the hills, heading east into the canyons.

A considerable treasure was the shipment on the Monitor for this trip – including three gold ingots, 1056 ounces of gold dust and nuggets, $500 in diamonds, $500 in jewelry, and $2000 in currency — a total value of $27,075 at that time.

When the stage didn’t arrive at the Beaver Creek stage station, three men rode north to find out what had happened. Along the road, they met Davis riding for help. The four returned to the Canyon Springs Station where they found the Monitor standing abandoned with the treasure box emptied, the attendant locked in the granary, and the other employees tied to trees in the woods.

"After the holdup" posed photo of Deadwood stage as it would appear after a holdup

When word reached Deadwood, posses were formed in many towns in Dakota and Wyoming to hunt down the bandits, and Homestake posted a fat reward for their capture. The news even reached New York City by September 27th. The posse picked up the trail of the gang in the area toward Pactola. Trailing the gang east, past the boomtown of Rapid City and then out onto the prairie, they found the gang but decided to wait until daybreak to take them. However, the gang nipped out during the night. The posse split up but lost the outlaws’ trail near Fort Pierre on the Missouri River.

One gang member doubled back on the trail into Wyoming and was caught near the site of the robbery, where he was hanged on October 3rd. In October, two other outlaws tried to sell stolen bullion in Deadwood. They were arrested and packed onto a stagecoach to Cheyenne to be tried. Along the road, the stage was stopped by vigilantes who threatened the outlaws and forced a confession. Taken on to Cheyenne with a confession to convict them, the pair were held in jail until November 2. When it was learned that a trial could not be held for several more months, the two were sent back to Deadwood. On November 3rd, their bad luck dogged them and the men were dragged from the stage by five angry vigilantes near Fort Laramie on the Little Cottonwood river and hung them from nearby trees.

Lame Johnny was caught in Pine Ridge in July 1879 and taken to Chadron (Nebraska) where he was put on the Sydney-Deadwood stage to be tried in Deadwood. Lame Johnny confided to several people that he was very much afraid of his guard, who left the stage at Buffalo Gap. Not far out of town a masked rider stopped the stage and took Lame Johnny off , promptly hanging Lame Johnny from a convenient elm tree beside the creek, which is now named after him.

As a result of rewards and the efforts of the lawmen hunting them, within six weeks of the robbery, the Homestake Mine reported that 60% of the loot had been returned. Only two gold bars remained lost.

So what is left to find? Two gold bars, weighing 284 ounces, were never recovered. The bars were likely hidden by the gang somewhere between the Canyon Springs station and Pino Springs. Even the smallest bar, 115 ounces, would be worth well over $100,000 today!




Happy to offer a free ebook in a random drawing from all comments left.

References:

http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/treasure-legends-south-dakota/114861-lame-johnnys-treasure-canyon-springs-stage-robbery-45-pounds-gold.html



About Double Jeopardy:

Becky Campbell leaves New York in search of her father, only to learn he was murdered. She determines to fulfill his dream— make the Double Jeopardy mine profitable.

Zeke Graumann, local rancher, will either have to take on a job to pay his overhead expenses, or sell his land. While he admires Becky, he also recognizes she was never cut out to be a rancher’s wife.

Can Becky overcome her mistrust of Zeke, find her father’s killer, and turn her mine into a profitable venture? And will Zeke be forced to give up his land in order to win Becky’s heart?



About Donna:

Donna writes historical suspense under her own name, and contemporary suspense under her alter ego of Leeann Betts, and has been published more than 30 times in novellas and full-length novels. She is a member of ACFW, Writers on the Rock, SinC, and CAN; facilitates a critique group; teaches writing classes; ghostwrites; edits; and judges in writing contests.

Women in the Old West

By Miralee Ferrell

I've written several books where the heroine was the owner of a ranch, her father recently died and she was forced to take over, or her father was an alcoholic and had let the ranch go. I love writing strong women in the Old West, but I've been asked before if women really did have the right to own land and run a ranch, or if they really lived such adventurous lives as I've written--so I thought I'd give you a few examples from real life.

The first and one of the most remarkable is Margaret Heffernan Borlund. Margaret was one of the first women cattle drivers in America, an Irish Immigrant, daughter of John and Julia Heffernan. After her husband's death she assumed full responsibility for his estate, a large cattle ranch. She left the physical labor to her hired hands. She bought and sold livestock. By 1873 she had 10,000 head of cattle. In the Spring of 1873 she left her home in Texas with two sons, both under 15, a 7 year old daughter, and a younger granddaughter and a group of trail hands. After successfully reaching Wichita, Kansas, her destination, she suddenly was consumed by an illness known as "Trail Fever." Which included congestion of the brain. She soon died and her body was returned to Texas for burial.

One of the most unusual that I've stumbled across, and one that's similar to a Western I wrote (Love Finds You in Sundance, Wyoming) concerns Charley--Charlotte--Parkhurst. Only in my book, the woman posing as a man stopped doing so after a few years, and regained her feminine role. Charley never did. 

Charley Darkey Parkhurst, born Charlotte Darkey Parkhurst (1812–1879),[1]

Illustration by Brian Selznick

also known as One Eyed Charley or Six-Horse Charley, was an American  stagecoach driver, farmer and rancher in California. Born and reared as a girl in New England, mostly in an orphanage, Parkhurst ran away as a youth, taking the name Charley and living as a male. She started work as a stable hand and learned to handle horses, including to drive coaches drawn by multiple horses. She worked in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, traveling to Georgia for associated work.

In her late 30s, Parkhurst sailed to California following the Gold Rush in 1849; there she became a noted stagecoach driver. In 1868, she may have been the first female (though passing as a man) to vote in a presidential election in California.[1][2] At her death, it was discovered that she was female, as was the fact that she had given birth at an earlier time.[3]

Another sturdy, widowed pioneer woman who traveled from London to America

to find a better life for her children was Elizabeth Simpson Bradshaw. She and her five children, the youngest only 6 years of age, walked across the American prairie pushing all her family possessions in a handmade, wooden handcart. Many were the heart rending scenes she witnessed of death and burial. At one place, fifteen souls were buried in one grave; another time, a two year old girl was buried and the wolves were digging for her body before they were out of sight. Some of the men stood guard over the graves as long as possible to keep the wild animals away. After much tribulation, Elizabeth, with all of her children still living, arrived at her destination, the Salt Lake Valley. There in the West she made her home, reared her children, and is honored by her posterity.

I've yet to write a book about a woman outlaw, although my Sundance book touched the fringes with the heroine having grown up in an outlaw gang, then escaping at the age of 18. But this post wouldn't be complete without a woman outlaw--I give you Pearl Hart.

Pearl Hart, née Taylor, (c. 1871 – after 1928) was a Canadian-born outlaw of
the American Old West. She committed one of the last recorded stagecoach robberies in the United States; her crime gained notoriety primarily because of her gender. Many details of Hart's life are uncertain with available reports being varied and often contradictory. 

The robbery occurred on May 30, 1899 at a watering point near Cane Springs Canyon, about 30 miles southeast of Globe.[7] Hart had cut her hair short and took the highly eccentric act, for a Victorian Era woman, of dressing in men's clothing. Hart was armed with a .38 revolver while Boot had a Colt .45.[2] One of the last routes in the territory, the run had not been robbed in several years and thus the coach did not have a shotgun messenger. The pair stopped the coach and Boot held a gun on the robbery victims while Hart took $431.20 and two firearms from the passengers. After returning $1 to each passenger, she then took the driver's revolver. After the robbers had galloped away on their horses, the driver unhitched one of the horses and headed back to town to alert the sheriff.[9]

Miralee Ferrell started her writing journey in 2005 and her first book, The Other Daughter, was published in 2007. Since then she’s become is an award-winning, multi-published, best-selling author with 12 books in both women’s contemporary and historical romance, along with four middle grade girls’ horse

novels. She lives with her husband in the Columbia River Gorge, loves country life and enjoys taking research trips for her historical settings. She’s taught workshops at library and writer conferences, spoken at churches, historical societies and multiple women’s groups, and looks on her writing as a ministry. Miralee is a past president of Portland ACFW for 5 years, and a licensed lay-counselor through the American Association of Christian Counselors.

You can learn more about Miralee by visiting her blog/website and signing up for her newsletter all at THIS Location. 

Miralee would love if you'd join her on her Facebook group where you can interact one-on-one HERE