This Day…

1887-Eight Hash Knife riders led by Tom Tucker rode up to the Tewksbury place in Pleasant Valley, Arizona looking for trouble and got it.  The Tewksburys killed Hampton Blevins and John Paine and wounded three others including Tucker.  Tucker survived and later became a lawman in Santa Fe.

1896-Black Jack Will Christian and his gang, the High Fives, robbed a bank in Nogales, Arizona.  Newsman Frank King spotted them and opened fire with a .41 Colt wounding two of the horses.  The outlaws fled town with an empty sack.

1895-Zip Wyatt was caught sleeping in a cornfield near Skeleton Creek, Oklahoma by a posse who gut shot him and shattered his pelvis before he was disarmed and taken into custody.

1876-The town of Deadwood was mourning the death of Wild Bill Hickok.  Hickok was shot and killed the day before during a poker game in Saloon #10.

1876 – As the result of Custer’s defeat at Little Bighorn, all reservation Sioux become prisoners of war.

1865 – The Old West’s first recorded “movie style” shootout takes place between Wild Bill Hickok and Dave Tutt.

1850- Gold is discovered in Oregon’s Rogue River country.

1912 – General William Hull, commander of American troops in the western territories, leads a force of 2200 men across the Detroit River in order to occupy Sandwich, Canada.

1857 – George A. Custer, 21, enters West Point.

1899 – Buckskin Frank Leslie came home to his ranch bad drunk from a week long toot in Tombstone.  He got into an argument with his girlfriend, Mollie Williams, and in a jealous rage shot her dead.  He also shot Jim Neal, a hired hand, who witnessed the shooting.  Neal recovered and testified against Leslie, who was found guilty of murder and sent off to Yuma Prison.  Many years later Neal hired Leslie as a swamper in a Bay area saloon.