Canyon Diablo shootout
Date | April 8, 1905 |
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Location | Canyon Diablo, Arizona Territory, US |
Outcome | 1 killed 2 wounded |
The Canyon Diablo shootout was a
Background
Little is known about the lives of William Evans and John Shaw before they became bandits. The former was an ex-convict who also went by the name of William Smith, or Smythe. Both were in their early to mid twenties when they decided that banditry would be easier than being a cowboy. The robbery which ultimately led to the shooting in Canyon Diablo occurred on the night of April 7, 1905. Shortly before midnight, Evans and Shaw entered the Wigwam Saloon in Winslow, Arizona, dressed in their finest clothing. The two headed straight for the bar and ordered a couple of shots of rot gut, a type of
Pete Pemberton, the
The town of Canyon Diablo was located about twenty-five miles west of Winslow, next to the gorge
Shootout
Sheriff Houck and Pemberton first made contact with Fred Volz, who owned a small store in town since 1886, where he traded with the
Having failed to make any hits with his first five shots, Shaw looked down to reload his gun when he was struck in the head by one of Houck's bullets. Pemberton then wounded Evans in the leg and he fell to the ground shooting. With his last bullet, Evans aimed for Houck and fired, but Pemberton shot him again, this time in the shoulder, which knocked the weapon out of his hand. The bullet went through Houck's coat on the left side, grazed him across the stomach, and then exited through the right side. The wound was not considered serious though. In roughly three seconds, Shaw was dead and Evans was badly wounded. As was common in the
Aftermath
Immediately after the shootout, Sheriff Houck had the body of Shaw placed in a pine wood coffin, provided by Volz, and buried in a shallow grave because of the extremely rocky soil. Evans was taken to the hospital in Winslow, where he recovered, and later he was sent to Yuma Territorial Prison for nine years. $271 worth of silver coins were found in their possession. On the night after the shooting, a group of cowboys, once employed by the Aztec Land & Cattle Company, were having drinks at the Wigwam Saloon when they heard the news and how both Evans and Shaw failed to drink the shots they had paid for on the night before. One of them came up with the idea of going to Canyon Diablo to exhume Shaw's corpse for one final drink.[1][2]
Between fifteen and twenty men hastily volunteered for the journey and, as Sheriff Houck and Pemberton did, they hopped aboard a westbound train and made it to Canyon Diablo at about dawn on April 10, 1905. First they had a few more drinks at the train station and then went to borrow some shovels from Fred Volz to proceed with digging up Shaw's coffin. Volz was angry about what the drunken mob intended to do in the cemetery so at first he was reluctant in giving up his tools. However, he eventually gave in and provided not only the shovels, but a Kodak camera. According to differing accounts, Volz either wanted pictures to collect reward money, being that he was directly involved in the demise of the outlaws, or they were taken for posterity. A short time later, Shaw's coffin was opened and two of the cowboys had his body lifted out of the box and leaned up against the picket fence surrounding another man's grave. Shaw appeared to be smiling, which made all of the men uncomfortable, some of whom began to cry. After giving Shaw "a plentiful gulp of whiskey", taking a few pictures, and saying some prayers, his body was replaced in the coffin with a half-empty bottle and put back into the grave.[1][2]
The pictures were displayed on the walls of the Wigwam Saloon in Winslow until the 1940s when the building was torn down. By that time, the ghost town of Canyon Diablo was reopened and renamed Two Guns. On October 28, 1905 Just seven months after the shooting in Canyon Diablo, Deputy Pemberton drunkenly shot and killed Winslow Town Marshal Bob Giles during a dispute in the Wigwam Saloon. Pemberton was arrested and found guilty, but he was acquitted after serving only a small fraction of his twenty-five year sentence.[2][4][5]
See also
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h "Tombstone Epitaph Newspaper Vol. CXXII No. 1". Archived from the original on 2013-01-01. Retrieved June 26, 2012.
- ^ a b c d e f g h "Devil Canyon Shoot-Out: Winslow Lawmen vs. William Evans and John Shaw". Bob Boze Bell. July 1, 2008. Archived from the original on June 23, 2012. Retrieved June 26, 2012.
- ^ "Shootout at Canyon Diablo" (PDF). Retrieved June 26, 2012.[permanent dead link]
- ISBN 978-1-4027-3938-5.
- ^ ODMP memorial Marshal William Joe Giles ODMP memorial