Wyoming History: Beloved Sheriff Shot By…

The Union Pacific train traveling half a mile west of Wilcox, Wyoming was marked by a lantern in the darkness at 2:15 a.m. on Friday, June 2, 1899.

The engineer named WR Jones stopped the locomotive, thinking that the bridge ahead was out of order. Instead, two men wearing white masks jumped into the cabin and ordered the train to move forward to the bridge.

“One of the robbers told him there was enough dynamite down there to blow him to hell,” the Carbon County Journal reported on June 3, 1899. A masked man jumped off, lit the dynamite fuse, then jumped back on board and ordered the train forward.

Thus begins one of Wyoming’s most infamous train robberies involving members of the Hole in the Wall Gang. It would lead to the death of one of the state’s most beloved sheriffs and spark a manhunt that would see Wyoming’s governor coordinate with the president to get federal help to bring the criminals to justice.

A prominent newspaper of the time even called the train robbery, which was accomplished by blowing up a safe – and the train car it was in – “the most daring crime of its kind in the West.”

Converse County Sheriff Josiah Hazen was already in his third year in office.

The Natrona County Pioneer reported arresting a scammer in Glenrock for the Natrona County Sheriff’s Office. The Daily Deadwood Pioneer-Times in Deadwood, South Dakota, reported on June 8, 1899 that Hazen had been in town that winter to arrest a man wanted for forgery.

When Hazen learned of the June 2 train robbery, he joined the hunt by taking a train to Casper with Union Pacific detectives on June 3.

It turned out to be a pursuit of justice that would lead to the sheriff being shot by a member of the infamous outlaw gang.

What the police officers knew was that six masked men had robbed the first part of the United Pacific train after forcing it over the bridge. They then blew up the bridge – one robber clubbed the driver who he said was too slow to bring the train across.

After the train crossed the bridge, they separated the mail and express cars and blew a hole in them. They placed dynamite on the safe and blew a hole in it.

Unsigned currency

Later reports indicated that the loot included $3,400 in unsigned money for the First National Bank of Portland, as well as $34,000 in cash and $7,000 in valuables.

The bandits got on horses and headed north.

“Word was sent to Sheriff McDonald, and he brought a posse to the scene,” the Carbon County Journal reported on June 3. “Sheriff McDonald remained in Rawlins and organized another posse to move north out of town late in the afternoon. The group left at 7 o’clock last night for Brown’s Canyon.

“Assets were also deployed from Laramie, Dana, Casper and Lander and the desperadoes could be surrounded and hemmed in, making it impossible to escape.”

Hazen and the men on the train met with Natrona County Sheriff Oscar Hiestand Saturday afternoon. While some police officers took the train out of town, Hazen stayed in Casper.

Sunday morning, a cowboy rode into town looking for his wayward horses and reported that two men had drawn their guns on him in an abandoned house.

Both sheriffs thought they probably had their suspects. Since there were only a few good horses in town, Hiestand went to the CY Ranch to find men and horses for a group.

Hazen apparently found a horse and took with him six men who also had good horses with them, including Dr. J.F. Leeper.

The group gathered outside the city, followed the bandits and engaged in a brief battle. During that battle Hiestand lost his horse. But Hazen and those with him continued in pursuit.

On Monday, Hazen and his group found the outlaws’ horses and their shoe prints near Teapot Creek.

‘Here they are, boys, here. Here are their numbers,” Hazen said in a Converse County weekly, Bill Barlow’s Budget. Shots rang out and the “brave sheriff fell, got up, ran a short distance and fell again.”

Bullet through the stomach

He took a bullet through his stomach and out of his back near the spinal column. Men in the troop secured the area and some went to try to find a car for Hazen. After several hours, Bill Barlow’s Budget reported that they had found one and used it to transport the sheriff to Casper.

Hazen wanted to be taken to Douglas. The railroad ordered a special car and engine to take him there. He died the next day at his home.

“It is rarely the business of a newspaper to chronicle the death of a man so universally esteemed and loved by the people among whom he lived,” reported Bill Barlow’s Budget on June 7, 1899. “Possessed of a sunny disposition that made him led to look on the bright side of life, Joe’s kind words and hearty laugh have swept away the cobwebs of worry and sorrow from the minds of more than one of us during his time among us.

Gov. DeForest Richards of Wyoming attended his funeral, which filled the city streets. The services were led by Freemasons and members of regional lodges arrived by special trains, alongside many members of the region’s farming community.

As for the raiders, their horses useless from exhaustion, they managed to evade the troop on foot, steal horses from a nearby camp and get to the Hole in the Wall.

The hunt for the men intensified. Richards contacted President William McKinley about federal marshal assistance and ordered the Wyoming Militia to leave Buffalo to assist in the hunt.

Attempts to pass on the unsigned and torn notes led the agency Union Pacific and Pinkerton to the Curry brothers. They allegedly ran a salon business in Harlem, Montana. Then fled.

Killed a curry

In March 1900, a Pinkerton police officer went to Dodson, Missouri with police officers to arrest a gang member named Lonny Logan aka Louis Curry, aka Louis Logan. He was killed during the arrest attempt. And Bob Lee, aka Bob Curry, was arrested while handing out cards in Cripple Creek, Colorado, the Omaha World-Herald reported.

“Louis Curry has for a number of years been a ‘bad man’ of repute in Montana,” the Omaha World-Herald reported on March 4, 1900. “Bob Lee is also an all-round robber, tinhorn gambler and thief and has been arrested for numerous crimes in Missouri, New Mexico, Wyoming, Texas and Colorado.”

Lee was tried in Cheyenne, Wyoming, for the robbery, but not for Hazen’s murder. He was convicted of robbing the train, but of not endangering the lives of postal workers. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

No one was ever convicted of Hazen’s murder, although some suspected the shooter was Harvey Logan, also known as Kid Curry and George Curry. George Curry is said to have died in 1900 while rustling cattle in Utah. But his death was never officially confirmed.

Kid Curry reportedly died by suicide in 1904 after being shot by a gang following a train robbery.

Current Converse County Sheriff Clint Becker said the Hazen story and other achievements of former Converse County sheriffs are inspiring and historic, but not something he thinks about regularly. He said his department has embraced its Western roots by making the Cowboy Code of Ethics part of department policy.

One of the ten principles is ‘be courageous’.

Former cowboy, ranch foreman, businessman and police officer Hazen impressed the people he met with that quality.

“He was a friend to whom no one appealed in vain, always ready to extend the right hand of fellowship to a needy brother in need,” stated the Masonic Ashlar Lodge No. 10 in a newspaper resolution in Bill Barlow’s Budget on June 21, 1899. ‘A man of high principle and undoubted courage.’

Valley Killingbeck can be reached at [email protected].