by Mike Cox
Salt flats just beyond this historical marker started a war rangers tried to stop. Photo by Mike Cox.
An El Paso grand jury indicted six men in the murders, but by that time, they had gone to Mexico and never faced trial.
Visit: Two historical markers providing brief overviews of the Salt War stand at the salt flats 3.4 miles east of Ranch to Market Road 1576 on U.S. 62/180 in Hudspeth County. A marker erected in San Elizario in 1984 also summarizes the war. Old El Paso County Jail Museum, 1551 Main Street, San Elizario. Built in 1850, the jail saw use during the two different periods that San Elizario was county seat. When the Salt War shootout happened, Ysleta was the county seat, but the old adobe and steel lockup stands not far from where the rangers died. The jail was restored and opened as a museum in 2013. Also in San Elizario is the Los Portales Museum and Visitors Center, 1521 San Elizario Road.
FOUR MEN DEAD IN FIVE SECONDS
Former ranger Gus Krempkau’s questionable translation of Spanish-language testimony during the inquest following the killing of two young Mexican ranchers by cattle thief Johnny Hale near the Canutillo community led to a particularly sanguinary gun battle.
The April 14, 1881 legal proceedings in recess, an infuriated and still-armed Hale shot and killed Krempkau. Seeing this, city marshal Dallas Stoudenmire, himself a former ranger, drew his six-shooter and fired at Hale. That shot missed Hale, accidentally killing an innocent passerby. Immediately pulling the trigger again, the marshal’s next shot took out Hale. When former city marshal George Campbell, a friend of Hale’s, drew his pistol, the marshal’s fourth and final shot dropped him. An estimated five ticks of the clock had passed, and four men lay dead on El Paso’s dusty street.
Before his forced resignation, Stoudenmire had killed six people as city marshal. A running feud fueled by too much booze, and aggravated by a bad temper, ended on September 18, 1882, when he was killed in a gunfight with brothers Doc, James and Frank Manning.
Visit: A historical marker detailing the fight is at the southwest corner of South El Paso and West San Antonio Streets. Stoudenmire’s body was shipped to his Texas hometown of Alleyton in Colorado County for burial. Take Alleyton Road one and a half miles south of Interstate 10 to the cemetery where he lies.
A PREACHER’S SON GONE VERY BAD
John Wesley Hardin, a Methodist preacher’s son who became the Old West’s most prolific gunslinger (and the inspiration for John Wayne’s classic 1976 movie The Shootist), has been blamed for as many as forty-one killings. He probably didn’t shoot that many people, but by most accounts Hardin was not the sort of person someone would want to annoy, especially when he was in his cups.
Out of prison after serving time for former ranger Charles Webb’s murder in 1874, Hardin had drifted west to El Paso. He had studied law in stir, but time behind bars had not broken him of boozing, gambling and an ongoing potential for violence.
On August 19, 1895, along with ample sips of whiskey, Hardin took three .45 slugs in El Paso’s Acme Saloon. El Paso constable John Selman, no deacon himself, did the honors, though the rangers certainly had their chances over the years. Since Hardin had killed one former ranger and shot at other rangers or tried to, Captain Hughes and his El Paso–based rangers shed no tears. As the old Texas saying had it, some men just need killing.
If Selman enjoyed the notoriety attendant to having been the one who finally got rid of Hardin, he did not have long to do so. Not a year later, on April 6, 1896, U.S. marshal George Scarborough ended Selman’s career in gun smoke.
Visit: Hardin died in the Acme Saloon, which stood at 227 East San Antonio Avenue. A historical marker placed in 1966 marks the site. The outlaw is buried in the city’s historic Concordia Cemetery at 3700 East Yandell Drive. A century after his death, descendants tried to get Hardin’s remains reburied at Nixon in South Texas, but a district court’s permanent injunction ended that. For years, Hardin had only a flat granite marker. Today, to prevent vandalism or worse, the grave is protected by a stone and metal-barred enclosure appropriately reminiscent of a jail cell. A historical marker in the cemetery tells the story of Hardin’s El Paso days.
Rangers missed their chance to kill outlaw John Wesley Hardin, who lies in an appropriately jail-like grave in El Paso. Photo by Mike Cox.
At least four Rangers eternally stand guard over Hardin at the cemetery: noted Captain Pat Dolan (1843–1930); Ernest St. Leon (1859–1898), who died from a line-of-duty shooting on August 31, 1898, at Socorro; Carl Kirchner (1867–1911); and Robert Jefferson Carr (1830–1902).
BAZZ OUTLAW SHOOTING
Standing in a print shop talking with friends on April 6, 1894, Ranger Joe McKidrict heard a pistol shot followed by a police whistle coming from the red-light district. Running to see if he could help, he found an obviously drunk former ranger Bazz Outlaw waving his pistol around behind Miss Tillie’s Parlor, one of the city’s numerous “sporting houses.” Constable John Selman had arrived moments before. Likely thinking to disarm Outlaw and leave it at that, McKidrict asked his former colleague to hand over his weapon. Instead, Outlaw shot him in the head and again in the back as he went down. The former ranger also got off a round at Selman, barely missing his head. His vision blurred by the muzzle blast and gun smoke, the constable fired toward Outlaw, hitting him just above the heart. Running on booze and adrenaline, Outlaw fired two more rounds, hitting Selman’s leg and thigh. A good ranger gone bad, Outlaw died later that day.
Visit: Miss Tillie’s Parlor stood at 307 South Mesa, then Utah Street. Outlaw died at the Barnum Show Saloon, 300 East Overland. Outlaw’s grave is in El Paso’s Evergreen Cemetery, 4301 Alameda Avenue. McKidrict (1871–1894) is buried in Austin’s Oakwood Cemetery. His real name was Joe Colly. The young ranger reportedly adopted the alias to hide from his mother. The reason is lost to history, but maybe she had worried that being a ranger was too dangerous a line of work.
HOW FUSSELMAN CANYON GOT ITS NAME
In El Paso for court, on the morning of April 17, 1890, ranger sergeant Charles Fusselman dropped by the sheriff’s office. The ranger found a deputy talking with city policeman and former ranger George Herold—the man generally credited with having killed outlaw Sam Bass—and Fusselman joined the conversation.
Not long after, a local rancher rushed in to report that parties unknown had butchered one of his calves and driven off with a good number of his horses. With the sheriff busy in court, the deputy couldn’t leave. Fusselman said he’d go after the thieves, and Herold volunteered to join him.
With Fusselman in the lead, the small posse easily picked up the rustler’s trail, which led farther into the Franklin Mountains from the scene of the crime. That afternoon, about ten miles north of town, Fusselman rode up on a hastily vacated camp, food (including meat from the rancher’s calf), utensils and other gear scattered around.
As the ranger studied the scene, a rifle bullet from the rocky ridge above zinged past his head. Fusselman yelled a warning to the others, pulled his revolver and started firing. An instant later, a second shot hit him in the temple. Then another round caught the ranger under his chin, but by then it didn’t make any difference. Realizing that the outlaws had the high ground and good cover, Herold and the rancher wheeled their horses and rode hellfor-leather back to El Paso for help.
A larger posse rushed to the canyon and recovered Fusselman’s body and most of the stolen horses, which the killers had abandoned, but did not find the outlaws. Ten years later, after rangers finally caught up with him, triggerman Geronimo Parra hanged for the murder.
Visit: A 2002 historical marker telling the story of Fusselman Canyon stands off Woodrow Bean Transmountain Road (State Highway 375), two and a half miles west of U.S. 54. Fusselman was first laid to rest in Concordia Cemetery but soon was exhumed for reburial in Live Oak County’s Logarto Cemetery.
CAPTAIN FRANK JONES (1856–1893)
In 1937, forty-four years after Mexican outlaws had cut him down, four old former rangers gathered for the dedica
tion of a gray granite historical marker commemorating Captain Frank Jones. Each had known Jones well, and two of them had been there when he died. Afterward, they obligingly posed around the stone for a photographer. What they were thinking can only be imagined. Why did a well-respected ranger have to die in the prime of life? Could they somehow have prevented it? How come they survived?
On June 29, 1893, the thirty-six-year-old captain and four rangers, accompanied by an El Paso County deputy sheriff, rode out of Ysleta headed for an area about thirty miles downriver known as Pirate’s Island. Back in the 1850s, the Rio Grande had changed course, leaving an international no-man’s land. The rangers carried arrest warrants for Jesus and Serverino Olguin, well-known cattle thieves. They also hoped to recapture brother Antonio Olguin, who had escaped from prison.
Finding only the Olguins’ blind father at the family residence, the rangers pulled back and made camp for the night. The next morning, the state officers saw two suspicious looking riders who galloped off when the rangers approached. The rangers started on their trail, riding straight into an ambush. When the intense firefight ended, the captain lay dead. Substantially outnumbered, the rangers withdrew, leaving Jones’s body behind.
Later, authorities discovered the incident had actually happened in Mexico, which complicated the return of Jones’s body and personal effects. (The captain’s pistol and handcuffs were never found.)
Fact or folklore, no one will ever know, but several writers have noted over the years that Captain John R. Hughes—Jones’s friend and successor—kept a list of twenty-one Mexican citizens and that, in time, he drew a line through eighteen of those names.
Old lawmen gathered for the 1937 dedication of a state historical marker at Ysleta commemorating Captain Frank Jones, whom they all knew and worked with. From left: Ed Aten, Ira Aten and Ed Bryant. Kneeling is John R. Hughes, who succeeded Jones. Photo by L.A. Wilke.
Visit: The Rio Grande has continued to alter the area’s geography over the years, so the exact spot of the fight is no longer known. A historical marker stands at 8461 Alameda Avenue in Ysleta. Jones’s grave there has been lost, his remains believed to have been swept away at some point when the Rio Grande changed course. The house in Ysleta where Jones lived, and Captain George W. Baylor before him, for years served as the Ranger headquarters for the El Paso area and much of West Texas. The structure continued in use as a private residence until it became the regional Texas Indian Commission office in the 1960s. In 1974, the U.S. Postal Service had the historic structure razed to make room for the Ysleta Post Office at 880 North Zaragosa Road.
RANGER FOILS A PRESIDENTIAL ASSASSINATION
As President William H. Taft and Mexican president Porfirio Diaz arrived for a historic meeting at the chamber of commerce building on October 16, 1908, a ranger and a private security operative possibly prevented an assassination.
Standing only a few feet from the president, Ranger C.M. Moore spotted a suspicious character in the crowd. He and the security man braced the man, and Moore found that he clutched a small pistol. The ranger arrested the man, but since he had made no move to point the weapon at the president or anyone else, once Taft had safely left town, he was released.
In 1969, the two-story brick building fell to the wrecking ball. One of many buildings designed by famed El Paso architect Henry C. Trost, the 1908 structure was the first in the Southwest built specifically for a chamber of commerce.
Visit: The building stood at 310–312 San Francisco Street. El Paso Museum of History, 510 North Santa Fe.
EASTLAND COUNTY
Cisco
SANTA CLAUS BANK ROBBERY
On December 23, 1927, four gunmen—including one dressed as Santa Claus—robbed the First National Bank of Cisco. Collecting $12,400, they escaped using two little girls for human shields as the town’s police chief and another officer exchanged gunfire with them.
Ranger captain Tom Hickman was sitting in Austin waiting for a train to Fort Worth when someone notified him of the robbery. Reaching Cowtown, Hickman learned that the Cisco police chief, an old friend, had been killed and one of his officers mortally wounded. One of the robbers, Louis Davis, also lay dying. The other three gunmen, including a not-so-jolly Saint Nick, remained at large.
Davis had been driven to the Fort Worth jail in a hearse. Hickman tried to get him to name his accomplices and tell where they might be hiding, but he would not talk.
Arriving in Cisco early on Christmas Eve, Hickman took charge, directing one of the largest manhunts the state had ever seen. His sergeant, Manuel T. “Lone Wolf” Gonzaullas, went up in an airplane as a spotter, participating in the first aerial search for criminals in Texas history.
When lawmen jumped the three suspects near the Brazos River several days later, Ranger Cy Bradford wounded one, Marshall Ratliff, in a wild shootout. Bandits Robert Hill and Henry Helms got away but were captured a few days later in Graham.
Hill got ninety-nine years for armed robbery, and Helms eventually died in the electric chair. Ratliff, the man who had played Santa Claus with a pistol, also drew a death sentence. But after Ratliff mortally wounded a jailer in an escape attempt, the people of Eastland County had had enough. The next day, November 19, 1929, a mob removed Ratliff from the county jail in Eastland and lynched him from a telephone pole.
Visit: Marked by a historical plaque, the old First National Bank, now vacant, is at 708 Conrad Hilton Boulevard. The old Eastland County Jail still stands at 210 West White Street in Eastland. Eastland Museum, 114 South Seaman Street; Old Jail Museum, 210 West White Street, Eastland. The rope used to hang Santa is displayed there.
JEFF DAVIS COUNTY
Fort Davis
GEORGE R. BINGHAM (CIRCA 1845–1880)
It may have been the day before Independence Day, but that meant little to ranger sergeant Edward A. Sieker, his civilian guide and five other rangers as they rode into the rugged Chinati Mountains looking for the hideout of Jesse Evans and his gang.
A convicted killer and hide-burner (as cattle thieves often were called), Evans had been released from prison in New Mexico in March 1879. Shortly after that, he and John Selman and several cronies drifted to the Fort Davis area and began helping themselves to other people’s livestock.
After searching for three weeks, Sieker’s men finally got a tip that led them to Evans’s camp. As the rangers approached, the outlaws started shooting. In the running gunfight that followed, Ranger Bingham caught a bullet. As the wounded ranger tried to get another round in the chamber of his jammed .44-40 Winchester, one of the outlaws—likely Evans—finished him off. Sieker killed one of the outlaws, and the lawmen captured Evans and two others.
Convicted and sent to the state prison in Huntsville, Evans escaped in 1882 and was never seen again.
I should have killed them all.
–Sergeant Edward Sieker
Visit: The exact location of the gunfight is unknown. Ranger Bingham was buried at Fort Davis, but his grave also has been lost. Fort Davis National Historic Site Visitor Center.
Also of interest is the Overland Trail Museum located in the former home of colorful barber and justice of the peace Nick Mersfelder (1858–1939). The pipe-smoking German came to Fort Davis as a ranger in 1881 and never left.
Overland Trail Museum in Fort Davis was the longtime residence of former ranger Nick Mersfelder, later a justice of the peace and barber. Photo by Mike Cox.
JONES AND TAYLOR COUNTIES
Abilene
PLEASANT LAVAGA WHITE (1848–1917)
Experiencing firsthand what it’s like to be a crime victim is what inspired Pleasant White to join the Rangers. The six-foot, two-inch Virginian came to Texas in 1876 only intending to visit his brother. But not long after that, a slick-talking conman swindled him out of all but eighty-five cents of his money. That left him so strapped for cash that when he enlisted in Company C of the Frontier Battalion that August, White had to borrow money to buy a horse and a saddle. He eventually repaid the
loan from his thirty-dollars-a-month Ranger salary.
Following his honorable discharge from the Rangers on July 31, 1879, White ran a livery stable at Buffalo Gap before buying the ranch he operated for the next thirty-four years.
In 1917, the former ranger took a train to Hope, Arkansas, to deliver some horses and mules to a buyer. Somehow, during the offloading of the animals, he suffered a hard blow to his head. Managing to make it back to his hotel, he sat down in the lobby to clear his head. When someone asked if he was all right, White said he was fine and then slumped over dead. The hotel staff, in gathering his personal items, found a Masonic pin among his things and contacted the local lodge. They, in turn, notified White’s family, and a lodge member escorted the body back to Taylor County for burial.
Visit: City Cemetery, Masonic section. Frontier Texas!, 625 North First Street. Buffalo Gap Historic Village, 133 North Williams Street, Buffalo Gap.
KIMBLE COUNTY
Junction
FIRST COURT IN KIMBLE COUNTY
In the spring of 1876, district judge W.A. Blackburn, who sat in Burnet County but whose judicial district included newly organized Kimble County, presided over the first court session in what was then called Kimbleville. Court convened in the shade of a large live oak that still stands north of present Junction. A freshly cut log served as the judge’s bench, with the gentlemen of the jury seated on two other logs. Apparently having forgotten his gavel, the traveling jurist used a gnarled piece of oak to call court to order. The defendants—chained to nearby trees—were mostly suspected horse and cattle thieves rounded up by rangers who stood guard nearby. A historical marker describing the county’s pioneer outdoor “courthouse” was erected in 1967.