Wednesday, June 30, 2010

‘Horse thief Six Shooter Jack killed out Croy Canyon’

In 1883, the weeks leading up to Hailey’s Fourth of July celebration were anything but quiet


By TONY EVANS
Express Staff Writer

The Hailey Fourth of July parade has a rich history. A Wood River Times “Freedom of the Press” parade float makes its way down Main Street circa 1940. Photo courtesy of Blaine County Historical Museum

In late June of 1883, a deluxe railroad car carrying mining baron George Hearst stopped in the dusty frontier town of Hailey, Idaho. Hearst was one of the biggest mining men in the world and T.E. Picotte, publisher of the Wood River Times, knew his visit would put the town on the map.

"Mr. Hearst's visit here will do us a great deal of good, as his movements are usually watched and when possible imitated by a number of smaller capitalists who have the utmost confidence in his judgement," Picotte wrote. "When a district gets good enough for Hearst, they say, it is good enough for any mining town."

During that summer, Hailey was trying out a "new-fangled electric light" for the first time. It frustrated citizens because "the dadgasted thing can't be made to work when wanted."

Along with Hailey's rising fortunes as a silver-mining town came a certain amount of bad behavior. An 1881 newspaper notice for the Fourth of July Ball at a new Main Street hotel warned that "no objectionable characters will be admitted."

Objectionable or not, the characters that populated Hailey during the silver boom of the 1880s often made it into the newspaper, and have now become part of the lore of the Wood River Valley. Miners, after toiling in the rocky hills and gulches around Hailey, came to town to drink and gamble on Main Street or patronize the brothels on River Street. William Kennedy shot and killed Hank Lufkin at the former Broad Gage Bar in 1889, the same year that Lem Chung, a Chinese cook, was fatally stabbed, following a quarrel over a $2 gambling debt. George Hailey, son of Hailey's founding father, John Hailey, allegedly stabbed a man to death in front of the Hailey post office and fled, never to be captured.

As Hearst's train approached town, two weeks before Independence Day in 1883, Hailey Sheriff C.H. Furey must have felt some pressure from the town fathers to do something about Six Shooter Jack.

Jack was from Butte, Mont., where he was also known as Loeb. He had killed a man there several years before and was sentenced to seven years in the penitentiary. After serving only 22 months, Jack was pardoned, and according to the Wood River Times, had become "a horse thief, brawler and bad character, generally, and at times, while laying around Butte, would discharge two guns at once shooting the spots off two aces every time."

Picotte said Jack was "a great lover of fancy arms and always had three or four fine revolvers about him." Furey wasn't taking any chances going after the gunslinger, who had lately been implicated in a rash of horse-thieving on the road from Butte.

"This morning a calvacade of fierce looking men armed to the teeth and accompanied by a wagon filled with provisions, ammunition, and extra guns, carbines, cutlasses and revolvers, left the sheriff''s office for Camas Prairie, going via Croy Gulch," Picotte reported on June 20.

Onlookers thought the posse had been mustered to suppress an Indian outbreak, or defend newly discovered gold fields to the west. In fact, Furey had made up his mind to do something about horse-thieving in Alturas County after receiving the following telegram from H.G. Valiton on June 10:

"Look out for Six Shooter Jack and Charles Warfield. They passed here Friday, on the road to Arco, horseback, riding chestnut sorrels and bay horses, carrying large rolls of blankets behind their saddles."

Valiton had requested the well-armed posse from Furey after losing horses and a wagon to Six Shooter Jack. General E.E. Cunningham was elected leader of the posse after Jack was reported camped in Willow Creek west of Hailey on the road to Boise City.

It was 5 o'clock in the afternoon when the posse spotted Jack and several others in his band in the distance. A cowboy by the name of Frank King was sent to fall in with the thieves, identify the brands of the stolen horses and report back.

King found the desperados after riding six miles, rode with them for four miles and returned to Cunningham to report on the location of their camp, about 60 miles west of Hailey near Grave Creek.

Cunningham and two deputies approached the camp by moonlight and on foot. They found the outlaws sleeping in the open air in a clearing surrounded by brush. By daylight the entire posse had surrounded the men, and called on them to surrender.

Jack went for his guns and was shot through with a volley of bullets. His partner, Warfield, was arrested. Four others were let go as they were deemed innocent and had only ridden along with the criminals.

Deputy McCurdy went to Jack's bed and took six revolvers. In about five minutes he watched as Jack drew his last breath.

The Fourth of July celebration in Hailey began two weeks later with an anvil salute at daylight that "awoke the country for miles around," wrote Picotte. The Miner's Union, 250 men strong, paraded through the streets of Bullion and into Hailey. Grand Marshal W.T. Riley joined the procession with the Ogden Brass band and a mile-long parade of vehicles of every description, "from the hay wagon to the family carriage."

Some 3,000 people gathered at Dorsey's Grove to hear E.O Wheeler, poet of the day, from Ketchum, read "Hail Columbia, Gem of the Ocean," a song that, at the time, vied with "The Star-Spangled Banner" for national anthem status. The Red Stocking Nine baseball team of Hailey played the Gate City Nine of Bellevue. Picotte reported that the umpire made so many bad calls against Hailey that the team walked away rather than finish the game.

"The Red Stocking refused to continue, although they could readily have vanquished their opponents," he wrote.

Just after 9 p.m., the fireworks began with a signal rocket sent up from the south end of the Chief of the Hill claim on Carbonate Mountain.

George Hearst would leave town that summer after inspecting his claims in Hailey, no doubt telling stories one day to his son, William, about the Wild West of Idaho.

Young William Randolph Hearst, perhaps enchanted by the stories of America, would one day found an empire of his own in journalism.

Tony Evans: tevans@mtexpress.com




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