This Day…

1862- Utah- the Holladay Overland Mail wagon train near Split Rock station is attacked by 30 Indians. Six of Nine people in the train are wounded in a four-hour battle. The Indians partially destroy two wagons and make off with nine mules.

1867- Fort Larned Kansas- General Hancock tells Cheyenne Indians to abide by the treaty of 1865 and stay on their lands south of the Arkansas River, or risk war.

1865- Fort Dodge, Kansas- the fort was established to protect the Santa Fe Trail from Indians. The post was designed to protect the U.S. mail and emigrant wagon trains on the Santa Fe Trail, and to serve as a base of operations against hostile Indians. It was located on the left bank of the Arkansas River on the “Long Route” of the Santa Fe Trail a few miles southeast of the present Dodge City. The site lay near the intersection of the “wet” and “dry” routes on the Santa Fe Trail. In 1867 Fort Dodge was relocated and rebuilt in stone buildings. In 1868 Comanches and Kiowas attacked Fort Dodge killing four soldiers and wounding seventeen. Fort Dodge was abandoned October 2, 1882.

1874- Texas- a stagecoach robbery between Austin and San Antonio is attributed to the James-Younger Gang.

1869- Johnson County, Texas- outlaw Benjamin Bickerstaff and his men roared into the town of Alvarado on this night and “hurrahed” the town by firing weapons into the air and some into the store windows. Irate citizens spilled into the street heavily armed, warned in advance of the arrival of the gang, and gunned down several members, including Bickerstaff who was shot dead from his horse by a load of buckshot from a shotgun fired almost point blank into his face.

On this day in 1860, the first Pony Express mail, traveling by horse and rider relay teams, simultaneously leaves St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California.

2005 – Rick Enss was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for something he didn’t do.  The real criminals are still at large.