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The Notorious Men of the Wild West

Khalid Elhassan December 4, 2019 32 min

20. The Hole in the Wall

A posse assembled to hunt down The Wild Bunch in 1900. Wikimedia

A year after robbing his first bank, Butch Cassidy bought a ranch in Wyoming, near a notorious bandit hideout known as Hole in the Wall. In 1894, he was arrested and convicted of horse theft and extortion. Sentenced to two years, he was released and pardoned after a year and a half by Wyoming’s governor. In hindsight, the governor might have regretted his leniency.

Just a few months after the pardon, Cassidy formed the “Wild Bunch” gang and robbed an Idaho bank. Soon thereafter, he recruited Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, AKA The Sundance Kid. In 1897, Cassidy robbed a coal company’s payroll of $7000. In June of 1899, the Wild Bunch robbed a Union Pacific passenger train in Wyoming, which led to a massive manhunt, during which a Sheriff was killed in a shootout. A month later, Cassidy directed a train robbery in New Mexico, during which a Sheriff and another lawman were killed.

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.