It was the best of outlaw gangs, it was the worst of outlaw gangs, it was the age of the Wild West, it was the age of sheriffs, it was the spring of cattle rustling, it was the winter of manhunts, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to riches, we were all going direct to ruin.
In the last decades of the 1800s, as pioneers settled the frontier, a notorious hideaway emerged in the mountains of Wyoming called the Hole in the Wall. This hidden gorge, accessible only by a narrow pass, soon attracted a motley gang of cattle rustlers, robbers and gunslingers eager to lie low from the law. Among the outlaw bunch were notable hellraisers like Kid Curry, Black Jack Ketchum and Flatnose George Curry.
Foremost among the Hole in the Wall Gang was Butch Cassidy, the clever and charismatic son of Mormon pioneers. With his quick wit and taste for fine clothes, Butch was the natural leader of the Wyoming outlaws. His right hand man was the Sundance Kid, so nicknamed for once escaping jail in Sundance, Wyoming. With Butch’s brains and Sundance’s brawn, they assembled an outfit feared across the Rockies.
From their hideout haven, the Hole in the Wall Gang spent the 1890s ambushing mining convoys, robbing trains, and stealing cattle and horses which they’d rebrand and sell. Posses that came after them never reached the gang’s hideout. Pinkerton agents on their trail met similar dead ends. For a time, no law could infiltrate the remote gorge or stop the rustling and robberies.
However, the law kept coming. As banks and railroads exerted pressure, the Pinkertons led raids with new three-digit numeric codes to foil the gang’s telegraph wiretaps. By 1900, wanted posters papered the West as rewards climbed, making gang members uneasy. Sensing the closing frontier, Butch and Sundance fled to South America in 1901 to start fresh with robberies.
But there was no escape. After holding up mining payrolls in Argentina, an ambush by lawmen left Butch and Sundance full of bullet holes in 1908. The remains of the Hole in the Wall Gang dwindled, killed or captured over the next years. Their frontier haven was eventually abandoned, only remembered in legend. For the time of lawless bands roaming the purple sage plains had passed, never to return. As the British writer Dickens said, it was both the season of hope and season of despair. For the Wild West was ephemeral yet eternal.
