By Linda Wommack
In the early morning of Saturday, June 22, 1889, three men arrive separately in the small mining town of Telluride. One is known in town, so stays busy working with his horses. The other mingles with the town folks, learning names and occupations. The third stranger keeps a low profile, watching the operations of the personnel at the San Miguel National Bank. As County Clerk Charles Painter leaves the bank, at 10 a.m. sharp on Monday, June 24, 1889, the trio makes their move.
Entering the bank, the men pulled their guns and demanded the cash that C. Hyde, the teller, was counting. One of the men held a gun on Hyde, while the other jumped the counter and filled a sack with the money. Turning to the bank vault, he cleared it of all the cash as well. The thieves left the bank, mounted their horses, held by the third member of the party, and quickly left town. As the riders reached the outskirts of town, a bystander, Harry B. Adsit, recognized two of the bandits.
One was Matt Warner, a guy who raced horses, the other was his ex-employee, George Cassidy. As the bank robbers raced out of town, Butch Cassidy entered the history books for his first hold-up that would lead to the forming of the Wild Bunch and the legendary Outlaw West.
The planning and execution of this legendary hold-up was the brainchild of Tom McCarty, the third member on that day in charge of the horses. It was McCarty’s ingenious plan, never before used that allowed Cassidy, Warner and McCarty to make a clean getaway, with a cool $10,500 in cash. McCarty placed relay stations along the getaway route with fresh horses and water. In this manner, the bank robbers were able to cover more than 35 miles toward the Mancos Mountains before the posse left town. The trio rode away free to Robber’s Roost, an outlaw hideout in the desert of southern Utah. The Telluride bank robbery introduced a new tactic to be used by members of the Wild Bunch for the next decade, and McCarty’s plan became renowned across the American West and outlaws in particular.
McCarty, along with his brother, Bill, had been robbing and rustling cattle all over eastern Utah since 1884. Known as the “Invincible Trio,” when outlaw and brother-in-law, Matt Warner, joined the gang, they moved into bank robbery in Utah and Washington. When things got too “hot,” the trio moved back toward Colorado.
Warner had a small ranch on Diamond Mountain, on the western edge of Brown’s Hole. The geography of the area is a rugged no-man’s land. Situated in northwestern Colorado, Brown’s Hole covers the borders of Utah and Wyoming. Because of the rough terrain and the obvious law jurisdiction, Brown’s Hole was seldom penetrated by lawmen from anywhere. Likewise, the McCarty brothers had started a ranch near Cortez with rustled cattle. Near the Utah border, the desolation of the area, as well as jurisdiction, were also to the McCarty’s’ favor.
By 1884, Matt Warner had been working with racehorses at Charlie Crouse’s ranch, where he met Elza Lay, future member of the Wild Bunch gang. It was during a horse race at Telluride that Warner met 19-year-old George Cassidy, who hauled ore for the local mines. Cassidy also had a horse in the race and placed a bet with Warner that his horse would win. Warner’s horse, Betty, won the race.
The two men became friends and soon formed a partnership. They traveled all over southern Colorado and Utah, beating every horse they raced. In Cortez, they found time for a hearty reunion of brothers-in-law, Warner and Tom McCarty. With time on their hands in the isolated cabin, conversation turned to easy money. It was here that the next few robberies were planned.
The first robbery occurred on March 30, 1889. A finely dressed Tom McCarty entered the First National Bank of Denver and demanded to see the president, David Moffat. McCarty showed Moffat a bottle of liquid, claiming it was nitroglycerine, and demanded $21,000 in cash or he would blow the bank sky-high. Terrified, Moffat retrieved the cash from the cashier. Calmly walking out of the bank, McCarty handed the money to Warner and the two went their separate ways, soon lost in the busy crowd. The bank heist made all the newspapers, but the robbers were unknown at the time.
With this great accomplishment in a big city, McCarty and Warner enlisted Cassidy for the Telluride bank robbery.
Warner later said, “The San Miguel National Bank was the finest bank I had ever seen.”
Again, newspapers all over the state reported the robbery.
On June 26, 1889, Rocky Mountain News reporter, “The robbery of the San Miguel Valley bank of Telluride by four daring cowboys of the Stockton outfit on the Mancos is one of the boldest affairs in Colorado.”
Obviously, the report was wrong as eyewitnesses, as well as law enforcement later revealed. Curiously enough, despite subsequent information confirming the identities of three of the robbers, two of which also participated in the Denver National Bank hold-up, no one was ever arrested for either robbery.
In the clear, McCarty, Warner and Cassidy went on to bigger and bolder robberies. After a series of lucrative outlaw escapades, Warner found himself in a jam when he was arrested for murder during an outlaw shoot-out in Vernal, Utah, in 1896. On Aug. 13, 1896, Butch Cassidy, Elza Lay and Bob Meeks robbed the Montpelier Bank in Idaho. Two weeks later, Cassidy delivered some $16,000 in cash to attorney Douglas Preston of Rock Springs, Wyo., who defended Matt Warner against the charges. While rumors of this robbery included Tom McCarty, he was in fact, laying low in California.
On Sept. 7, 1893, the McCarty brothers led their last bank robbery. Along with Bill’s son, Fred, the three held up the Farmers and Merchants Bank in Delta. The town alarm went out and armed men defended their town. When the smoke cleared, Bill and Fred were dead, and Tom was gone. He was never captured, arrested or convicted.
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This is a great article, thanks for sharing!
I did however find one inconsistancy in it. According to historian Richard Patterson ( http://www.amazon.com/Butch-Cassidy-Biography-Bison-Book/dp/0803287569/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_1 ) , the Warner, McCarty, and Cassidy trio did not “simply” flee to the Robbers’ Roost area of Utah after the Telluride robbery in 1889. Rather, they crossed the Colorado River on the Ferry near Moab, had some close run ins with a local posse as they escape through the vicinity of Arches National Park to the foot of the Book Cliffs near Thompson Springs. There, they made their way to Brown’s Park where they hide out on an old cabin of Charlie Crouse’s on Diamond Mountain.
Then, after a few day’s, one of Crouse’s hands rode up to the cabin to warn the outlaws that a posse was there looking for them. Only then, did they change their direction and (probably) head to the Robbers’ Roost area (near and in the Horseshoe Canyon and Maze district of Canyonlands National Park).
From pages 39-40 of Patterson,
“Neither Tom McCarty nor Matt Warner chronicled the next leg of their flight. McCarty says nothing about it, and Warner simply mentioned that they ‘beat it down there [to Robbers' Roost] in record time, riding by night and hiding by day.”
“In choosing a place to hide out after the Telluride robbery, one wonders why the trio did not head for Robbers’ Roost first. It was much closer to Telluride than Brown’s Park, and in Matt Warners’ opinion it was the ‘greatest natural rock fortress’ in America, maybe even the world. Maybe Warner and his pals chose Brown’s park first because they knew that the authorities would guess they would head to the Roost and cut them off before they could get there. Or maybe they choose not to hide in the Roost because of its heat- only a desperate man would try to live off the Roost in July and August.”
After a while, and perhaps after a run in with some lawmen, they trio headed to Lander, WY, where they split up for a few years, embarking on seperate (mostly rustling) ventures, before re-uniting a few years later.
That period, between the Telluride Escape and the Montipelier Robbery to raise Warners’ legal funds, is one of the most interesting (and inconsistent) period of Butch, Warner, and McCarty’s lives. Each was cast under a semi legal state of fearfulness than made difficult any legitimate aspirations to “go straight”. Different historians and autobiographers have submitted many different, conflicting acounts of where each of these people “may have” spent those years, and what they “may have” been up to.
If you’re even in Eastern Utah for something, the basement of the Railroad and Mining Museum in Helper (near Price, Utah) has some great info and exhibits about the Wild Bunch.