ROCKY MOUNTAIN STATES
Heists & getaways by Butch Cassidy & the Wild Bunch
Between about 1880 and 1900, numerous bank, train and payroll robberies associated with the Wild Bunch took place in the West. Some have been positively connected with Butch:
He was one of three cowboys who got away with $20,000 from the San Miguel Bank in Telluride, Colo., on June 24, 1889. It was his first big heist, successful largely because of his reconnaissance on the bank. Afterward, it's thought the robbers made a beeline to the outlaw hide-out of Brown's Hole on the Green River near the Utah-Wyoming border.
Despite serving two years in prison in Laramie, Wyo., for stealing horses, Butch didn't mend his ways. Instead, he held up a bank in Montpelier, Idaho, on Aug. 13, 1896. It was, historians say, the first job that can be credited to the Wild Bunch, which staged a precision attack on the financial institution, followed by what would become its signature: Pony Express-style getaways, in which tired horses are exchanged for fresh ones along the route.
The April 21, 1897, Pleasant Valley Coal Co. payroll robbery at Castle Gate, Utah, was a classic Butch job. He and his right-hand man, Elzy Lay, waited around the company office for the train carrying miners' salaries to arrive, then stuck a gun in the paymaster's face and relieved him of his bags. They fled on horseback, cutting the telegraph line on their way out of town.
On June 2, 1899, bandits stopped the Union Pacific Railroad's No. 1 Overland Limited just west of Wilcox, Wyo. Using explosives to open the safes, the robbers escaped with $30,000 to $60,000. It's uncertain which Wild Bunch members took part; Butch was said to be cow-punching in the area at the time. What is certain is that, as in the movie, railroad employee C.E. Woodcock refused to open the safe and was injured in the subsequent blast.
On Aug. 29, 1900, the Wild Bunch hit another Union Pacific train near Tipton, Wyo., a job executed in the same fashion as at Wilcox. This time, Butch was almost certainly in charge when the gang blasted into the express car and was again greeted by C.E. Woodcock.
Less than a month later, on Sept. 19, 1900, the Wild Bunch was at it again, robbing the First National Bank in Winnemucca, Nev., of an estimated $32,640 and escaping cleanly. Pinkerton detectives later pinned this one on Butch, but an article published long afterward in a Buenos Aires newspaper, purportedly based on interviews with Harry Longabaugh (sometimes spelled Longbaugh), a.k.a. the Sundance Kid, said Butch was there. The loot would have helped finance their trip to South America.
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