Arizona The Youngest State
McClintock, 1913, page 475
March 21, 1889 an Atlantic and Pacific train was stopped at the
Canon Diablo station by four robbers who, after searching the
contents of the express strong box fled northward. The scene
of the robbery was in Yavapai County and so the trail was taken
by Sheriff William O. O'Neill, with three deputies. The posse,
after a chase of 300 miles, consuming two weeks, finally sighted
their men in Southeastern Utah, forty miles east of Canonville.
Then came a pitched battle in which over fifty shots were fired,
though the only effect was the wounding of one of the robber's
horses. The fugitives, leaving their horses behind, plunged
into the mountains on foot, soon to be run down by the posse.
The capture included William D. Sitrin, "Long John" Halford,
John J. Smith and D.M. Haverick. Upon them was found about
one thousand dollars. A rather amusing incident was the
attempt of citizens of Canonville to arrest the desperadoes
but the attempt failed, for the large citizen's posse was
held up by the robbers and made to stack arms and retreat.
The return to Arizona was made around by Salt Lake. On the
homeward journey Smith escaped through a car window.
Another train robbery, September 30, 1894, occurred near Maricopa
where a through express was boarded by Frank Armer, a Tonto
Basin cowboy, only 20 years old, who climbed over the coal of
the engine tender and at the muzzle of a pistol stopped the
train where a confederate Rodgers was in waiting. Little booty
was secured. The two men, before this, had ridden in circles
around the desert in order to throw pursuers off of their track,
but Indians, taking broad radius, soon picked up the trail.
Rodgers was caught far down the Gila, and Armer was taken at
the home of a friend, near Phoenix, after a battle with Sheriff
Murphy and officers in which he was wounded. At Yuma
Penitentiary, under a thirty year sentence, he made three
attempts to escape. He dug a tunnel that was discovered
when it had nearly connected his cell with the world beyond
the great wall. A second time, when he broke for freedom
from a rock gang, he had to lie down under a stream of bullets
from a Gatling gun on the wall. A third time he secreted
himself while at outside work and eluded the guards, but
was run down in the Gila River bottom by Indian trailers.
Finally, prostrated by consumption, he was released, barely
in time to die at home in the arms of his mother. Rodgers,
sentenced to a forty-year term, served only eleven, then
being discharged for exemplary conduct.
Grant Wheeler and Joe George on January 30, 1895 held up a
Southern Pacific train near Wilcox and robbed the through
safe of $1500 in paper money. The safe was broken open by
dynamite upon the explosive piled sacks of Mexican dollars,
of which in the car they were about $8,000. The result was
satisfactory, the safe not only being cracked open but the
express car nearly wrecked as well, the silver pieces acting
upon it like shrapnel, sowing the desert around with bent and
twisted Mexican money which also was found deeply embedded in
telegraph poles and in the larger timbers of the car. Sections
of the telegraph poles and of the car, stuck full of silver
dollars, like plums in a pie, were valued souvenirs for years
thereafter in railroad and express offices along the coast.
Yet only $600 was lost from the silver shipment. The robbers
escaped into the hills. They returned for more on February
26 when they stopped a train at Stein's Pass but made the
mistake of disconnecting the mail car instead of the express
car, so got no booty. The trail was taken up by W.M.
Breakenridge, then in charge of the peace of the Southern
Pacific line in southern Arizona, who trailed Wheeler into
Colorado and ran him down near Mancos April 25. The next
morning the outlaw surrounded and appreciating the
hopelessness of his position after a brief exchange of
shots with the pursuing posse, committed suicide.
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