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Outlaw Trail

By the late 1800's the west was not nearly as wild as it once was. Towns with churches, schools, and jails dotted the landscape. Advancing railroad and telegraph lines made it more and more difficult for outlaws to hide from the lawmen who constantly pursued them. To avoid being captured the outlaws had to use the most remote locations for their hideouts.

Three of the most famous hideouts were Hole-in-the-Wall in Wyoming, Brown's Hole on the Colorado-Utah border, and Robbers Roost in Southeastern Utah. What was it that made these places such great hideouts for notorious outlaws? First, all three were very difficult to reach. Even today these places are miles from civilization and can only be reached by traveling on rugged dirt roads.

These were great hideouts because they are located in deep valleys, canyons and rivers. These things limit access to only a few strategic places. A few men could easily guard these entry points. If someone approached the outlaws had plenty of advanced notice. They could easily escape or the outlaws could ambush the approaching lawmen. The difficulty of reaching the outlaw hideouts and the threat of ambush by the outlaws rumored to be hiding there kept the law away.

While these hideouts were rugged and isolated they were still home to small communities of farmers and ranchers. These farming and ranching families were often very friendly with the outlaws. They provided the outlaws with food, water and security. These isolated families probably knew of the outlaw's misdeeds but they were often skeptical of the law whom they viewed as a tool of the rich.

Hole in the Wall

Located in Johnson County, Wyoming, Hole-in-the-Wall is perhaps the most famous of the three major hideouts that formed the Outlaw Trail. Outlaws hideouts providing the security and secrecy needed were hard to come by. The Hole in the Wall, fifty miles south of Buffalo in the shadows of the Big Horn Mountains, is located approximately sixteen miles from Kaycee, Wyoming - the area west of Kaycee is referred to as Hole-in-the-Wall country. As many as forty outlaws, including Jesse James, called the hideout home. Six log cabins were built to accommodate the outlaws; the remains of which can still be seen today. the Hole in the Wall was a notorious outlaw hideout for the gangs of Laughing Sam Carey, Black Jack Ketchum and Butch Cassidy.

The actual hole in Hole-in-the-Wall is a V-shaped wedge near the top of a sandstone cliff that leads into a fertile valley; the notch serves as the only access from the east. The valley proved an excellent location to allow stolen livestock to graze. Hole-in-the-Wall offered vantage points where the outlaws could see for miles and it has been said that a small number of men could hold off an army from the hideout.

Black Jack Ketchum favoring stagecoach robberies used the famous phrase often Throw Down the Box. (Meaning the stagecoach strong box.) Many a strong box was opened at the Hole in the wall with celebration to follow. The Hole in the Wall as early as 1880 had been used for an outlaw hideout. The crash of the cattle industry in 1884, caused a cow hand population boom with out of work cow hands hoping to find some easy money. The outlaw hideout called The Hole in the Wall during this time experienced a growing shanty town.

Tom McCarty Tom McCarty was one of Butch Cassidy's and Matt Warner's early mentors in banditry. Tom was Married to Matt Warner's sister Tennie. Tom was raised on a Mormon ranch near the Utah town of Ephraim and was known to use the Robbers Roost as a hideout. On Mar. 30, 1889, Tom McCarty joined Butch Cassidy and Matt Warner in robbing the First National Bank of Denver of $20,000. Tom McCarty approached the bank president that day and stated: "Excuse me, sir, but I just overheard a plot to rob this bank." The bank president nervously asked: "Lord! How did you learn of this plot?" "I planned it," McCarty said, raising his gun "Put up your hands." On September 7, 1893, Tom, his brother Bill, and Bill's son (Tom's nephew) Fred McCarty, held up the Farmers and Merchants Bank of Delta, Colorado. Fred held the horses while his uncle and father entered the bank. A. T. Blachey, the cashier began shouting for help as soon as the desperados stated their purpose. Tom leaped over the railing and shoved his revolver in Blachey's ribs, while Bill scooped the money into a sack. Fred rushed into the bank with news that a crowd was gathering, and the bandits began shooting. Blachey was killed and the assistant cashier wounded. As the McCarty's rushed outside to mount up a local hardware merchant, Ray Simpson, heard the commotion, he grabbed a new repeating rifle and shells off his shelves. He rushed out into the street as he loaded the rifle. As the robbers galloped past, Simpson knocked Bill out of the saddle with a slug in the head. Fred returned to help his dying father and was shot. After escaping a pursuing posse, Tom abandoned the outlaw trail for a quieter life and went straight. Father and son bandits Bill (left) and Fred McCarty remain teamed after death.

Browns Hole - now called Browns Park

An 11-mile long, mountain­rimmed valley where the Green River meanders between low hills, Browns Hole probably got its name from an early French fur trader. This isolated mountain valley was a favorite winter retreat and rendezvous for mountain men during the early 1800's fur trade. To the early trapper a "hole" was a sizeable valley abounding in game, and usually (with the exception of Yellowstone's "Firehole") associated with some distinctive personality — hence Brown's Hole, Pierre's Hole, Gardner's Hole, etc.

The first western saloon truly deserving the name flourished in the mountain man's West a generation before the existence of roads and the coming of the Conestoga wagons. It was set up in 1822 by a trapper named Brown in a place appropriately called Brown's Hole, at a spot where the present states of Wyoming, Colorado and Utah meet, in a lush, canyon-rimmed valley. It was the focus of one of the "Great Rendezvous", where once a year the beaver men, the wild and woolly free trappers, congregated to barter their beaver plews for "foofaraw" - baubles, beads, and red trade cloth – for their Indian squavs; and for a year's supply of tobacco, hardtack, powder, lead, and likker for themselves. They came also to go on the wildest, most complete drunk ever, to meet old friends, to shed, tears over "a hoss who had gone under", or to pick a fight, usually decided with knives.

Brown's Hole was more than a mere saloon. It was the largest settlement in the mountain man's West, the yearly host to up to five thousand traders, trappers, Indians, coureurs de bois, lone missionaries, squaw men, and famous pathfinders. Brown's Hole flourished for 18 years until 1840, when, simultaneously, the beaver was trapped to near extinction and beaver hats went out of fashion. The mountain men disappeared, and Brown's Hole was abandoned and quickly reclaimed by nature.

Cut by impassable canyons and unfordable rivers, gulches, and gullies, Brown's Hole not only offered an ideal hideout to fugitives but also provided excellent winter and summer range for stolen stock. Even the permanent residents of Brown's Hole did their share of rustling. Located on the northeast corner of Browns Hole was the "town" called Powder Springs.

Browns Hole was and still is the best of all the hideouts for raising cattle and since Browns Hole spans across the borders of Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado, it was possible for rustlers to avoid a sherrif from any of the three states by simply moving his herd across one of the borders.

Robbers' Roost

Between the Colorado, Green, and Dirty Devil Rivers lies a wild stretch of land crisscrossed with steep-walled canyons and hidden draws. For over 30 years this inhospitable terrain served as a hideout for outlaws of every description. Robbers' Roost was a stronghold of the Wild Bunch, Butch Cassidy's motley band of bank robbers, train stickup men, and horse and cattle rustlers.

The region probably gained its colorful name and reputation in the 1870s when Cap Brown ran stolen horses through the area. The Roost afforded hundreds of hiding spots and was difficult to penetrate, as the only easy access is via the mouth of the Dirty Devil River. A Circleville, Utah, native and grandson of a Mormon handcart pioneer named Robert Leroy Parker began using the Roost in the 1880s to hide cattle that he rustled with Mike Cassidy. Legend has it that Parker became a full-time outlaw in 1884, adopting the name Butch Cassidy in honor of his mentor.

Robbers' Roost was one of several hideouts along what became known as the Outlaw Trail. Brown's Hole, a rugged canyon region near the junction of Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming on the Green River, was another such hideout, along with the Hole-in-the-Wall in south-central Wyoming. The three hideouts, strung out in a roughly north-south line about 200 miles apart as the crow flies, served as temporary refuges or semi-permanent Wild Bunch headquarters in the 1880s, 90s, and early 1900s.

Another frequent resident of the Roost was Matt Warner, supposedly born Willard E. Christiansen to the fifth wife of a Mormon bishop in Ephraim, Utah. Warner served a cattle-rustling apprenticeship before joining the McCarthy gang along with Cassidy. The future Wild Bunch used Robbers' Roost after a Colorado bank robbery in 1889. Cassidy used it again in April 1897 when he and another man (probably Elzy Lay) held up the Pleasant Valley Coal Company payroll. Daring robberies such as these made the Bunch notorious (and folk heroes to some), while their hard rides between their refuges were equally impressive. Cassidy was an excellent rider and always stressed the importance of strong, well-trained horses, often changing mounts at Robbers' Roost during a long ride.

The Roost was never successfully penetrated by the authorities, despite some sporadic attempts and many boastful claims by various officials. Over the years the refuge gained a reputation as being impregnable, and stories about its defenses contributed to its legend. C. L. "Gunplay" Maxwell, a small-time bandit who reportedly yearned to join the Wild Bunch, wrote Governor Heber M. Wells from prison that the Roost was defended by a well-armed, 200-man gang with an intricate system of fortifications, tunnels, land mines, and a vast storehouse of supplies and ammunition. Few law officers cared to enter such (supposedly) dangerous ground. The Roost was largely abandoned as an outlaw hangout after 1902 when Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid reportedly departed on their fateful South American trip.

During prohibition the Robbers Roost area saw one last surge of illegal activity. A number of unlawful whiskey stills were erected at springs in the clandestine canyons. Moonshine was often the only way to earn cash during the depression years. Several of the canyons in the Roost still contain evidence of the illegal stills.

Sources: See Charles Kelly, , Richard Patterson, (Boulder, Colo., 1985). Information courtesy of Utah History to Go. Jeffrey D. Nichols. History Blazer. August 1995.

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