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Frank Hamer, Legendary Texas Lawman Who Bagged Bonnie and Clyde

Khalid Elhassan December 27, 2024 12 min

Hamer - Frank Hamer — Frank Hamer. Free Range America

15. A Law Enforcement Career That Tracked the Transition From Lawlessness to Law and Order

The arrival of the railroads added another lucrative target, albeit a more labor intensive one. It required teamwork from a sizeable outlaw gang to subdue an entire train in order to rob its hold and passengers. And throughout, banks were a standby target of choice. Lawman and Texas Ranger Frank Augustus Hamer (1884 – 1955) began his career in the dying days of classical Old West lawmen who strove to tame the wildness of the Wild West. His decades in law enforcement witnessed the transition from frequent lawlessness to the final victory of rule of law.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.