The old Wild West is the clobber of fable : Gunslingers robbing savings bank and train . Cowboys on long kine drives . Gold and silver medal rushes .
dinosaur , UFO , savage camels , and giant cannibals credibly do n’t come to mind .
But every time catamenia has its unknown tarradiddle , and the Wild West is no unlike . Some of those story are just what you ’d expect , while others are surprisingly modern .
1. ELMER MCCURDY’S AFTERLIFE WAS STRANGER THAN HIS LIFE AS AN OUTLAW.
Elmer McCurdy is not incisively a household name . Unlike Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid , Jesse and Frank James , or Billy the Kid , his exploits as a train and bank robber never gained him much infamy . Neither did his condition as one of the last real Wild West criminal , defeat in a shootout with the jurisprudence . ( He ’d never be taken alive , he say . )
No , Elmer McCurdy win his renown more than 60 years after his death , in 1976 , when memories of those wild Day on the frontier were give way with the last multitude who ’d lived them .
That ’s when the crowd ofThe Six Million Dollar Manborrowed an amusement park funhouse to scud an episode . As one of the bunch phallus propel a dummy , its arm fall off — revealing thatthe dumbbell was actually a mummy . McCurdy , specifically , as anautopsy later revealed .
It seems that after being shoot , someone had gone to the funeral rest home and identified themselves as McCurdy ’s long - lose brother so as to take the consistency . In fact , he was a carnival owner . ( Carnivals did a snappy trade in outlaw corps to appeal crowds in the other days of the twentieth century . ) McCurdy ’s body also spend meter asrepayment for a bad debt , play a ma in a freak show , and collecting dust in a wax museum store spacebefore he became a funhouse airscrew .
McCurdy was finallylaid to rest on Boot Hill in Guthrie , Oklahoma , 66 years after he was killed . Were it not for a clumsy property crew member , who know where he ’d be today .
2. SMALL TOWNS IN CALIFORNIA AND TEXAS REPORTED CLOSE ENCOUNTERS 50 YEARS BEFORE ROSWELL.
Col . H.G. Shaw , as caricatured in theSan Francisco Call , Wikimedia Commons// Public Domain
Ask many hoi polloi about the first major forward-looking UFO incident , and they ’ll think back to Roswell , New Mexico . In July of 1947 , an Army Air Forces pressing going describe thatairmen had collected a “ flight disk ” that fell from the sky . It was subsequently reported to be a weather balloon ( and even later a atomic spying setup ) , but by then the concept of fly saucer and government cabal theories were well - entrenched in the American imagination .
Except Roswell was n’t the first UFO incident in U.S. history . Not by a long shaft . Turns out , “ Cowboys vs. Aliens ” has its roots in Wild West pop culture .
Long before close encounters with off - planet visitors offered rest period from the tensions of the Cold War , two men from Lodi , California report an essay abduction by three alien alien in 1896 . That twelvemonth , Col . H.G. Shaw and Camille Spooner were move from the little town of Lodi to the Fresno Citrus Fair when , they say , they come across three beings that were , well , not human . They were reportedly seven feet marvellous and very slender .
According to Shaw , the alien tried to abduct the two men , but Shaw and Spooner were much too heavy to kidnap . Their attempt was foiled , and the three organism leapt back into their starship and left .
“ I have a theory , which of course , is only a possibility , that those we beheld were denizen of Mars , who have been sent to the earth for the aim of batten one of its inhabitants , ” Shawwrote in an history he published in theEvening Mail , a Stockton newspaper at the time .
Lodi house physician John Callahan , who is write a ledger about the encounter , has tracked down late incidents of UFO sighting in the region . He shares some of his inquiry , admit the original intelligence chronicle by Col . Shaw , atthe Callahan UFO Report .
A year subsequently , Texas house physician reported a strange sight : Cigar - shape dirigible ( oddly similar to Col . Shaw ’s verbal description of the craft in Lodi ) flying over the United States Department of State . Then , one of these craft clank - landed outside Aurora , Texas . accord to a story published in 1979 , the town went to the website of the clangoring and found the soundbox of the pilot , which was “ not of this world . ” Being upright neighbour , they give the being a proper inhumation .
In 1973 , Mary Evans , who lived in Aurora at the time of the smash , shared her memories with a newsman . “ That clank for certain caused a batch of excitation , ” she say . “ Many the great unwashed were terrified . They did n’t know what to expect . That was years before we had any unconstipated airplanes or other kind of airship . ”
While Evans was not allowed by her parent to go to the crash web site , they told her about the alien buffer who was regain and its burial . In the same story , one natural philosophy prof partake that atomic number 26 had been institute near the purport crash website — ironthat did not display the usual magnetic propertiesof the metal .
Did either account really involve alien ? Probably not . UFO fans have been searching for the alien gravesite in Aurora for decade now with no fortune — thoughthey have not been permitted to disinter what they consider is a likely grave , either . The tales may show nothing more than that cowboys believe in alien encounters , too . Or that the hunger for adventure that took many to the Wild West was directed outwards , to the skies , as cities grew .
3. TWO TOMBSTONE COWBOYS SHARED ONE HECK OF A HUNTING STORY.
Library of Congress// Public Domain
Dig deeply enough in the westerly United States , and you have a decent chance of finding a fossil . Fromichthyosaurs in Nevadato anapatosaurus in Colorado , relic from earlier epoch dot the West .
They ’re long beat , though . The creature two cowpuncher claimed to have bag near Tombstone , Arizona in April 1890 was reportedly very much alive before they met it .
According to the account that race in theTombstoneEpitaphback then , “ A winged monster , resembling a huge alligator with an extremely stretch backside and an immense pair of wings , was found on the desert between the Whetstone and Huachuca great deal last Sunday by two ranchers who were pass home from the Huachucas . ”
After a chase , they shoot the bird down , and report that it was about 92 feet longsighted and and 160 feet from wingtip to wingtip . “ The monster had only two feet , these being situated a short distance in front of where the wings were joined to the soundbox . The read/write head , as near as they could judge , was about eight foot long , the jaws being densely set with inviolable , tart teeth . Its eyes were as large as a dinner party dental plate and protruded about halfway from the head , ” theTombstone Epitaphreported .
A photo of the hypothesise thunderbird , which resembled a prehistoric pterodactyl , was also taken . Or was it ?
The story was likely a fraud , and the picture was almost certainly fake . While there are claims the photograph was printed with the original article , it was not;the first credit of it appears in 1963 . The story itself was never impress by theEpitaph ’s competition in Tombstone , and the 1890s was the golden age of yellow journalism in the United States .
But as fraud go , it ’s a pretty good one , considering all of the thunderbirds , winged serpents , and other strange flying wight that are found throughout the myths of the Southwest .
4. THE RED GHOST TERRORIZED RANCHERS OF THE SOUTHWEST.
Larry D. Moore viaWikimediaCommons//CC BY - SA 4.0
If not for the Civil War and a Washington lobbying radical , the Wild West might have been populated by camelboys instead of cowboy . When Edward Fitzgerald Beale , a Texan war veteran , saw how badly buck fared in the desert of the Southwest , he suggest importing camel .
It was in 1855 that the idea first took off , under then - Secretary of War Jefferson Davis . Two years later , the U.S. military machine imported 75 camels and formed a U.S. Army Camel Corps . One group was stationed in Texas , and the other steer for California under Beale ’s command .
But with the Civil War looming on the sensible horizon , U.S. Congress was not fain to compensate for still more camel . Mule breeder fight the idea , too . And when the fighting break out , Confederate forces captured the Texas herd and let most of the camels loose .
That ’s where things get interesting , because it turns out Beale and Davis were right . The camel really were exceptionally suitable to the desert . And most cowboys had never date the beast , imply that as they roamed Arizona and New Mexico until the previous 1890s , they spawned a stack of unknown tale .
Take , for example , the Red Ghost . colonist described it as a terrifying beast with some terrific rider strapped to its back . According to aSmithsonianarticle , fable say the ghost aim down a bear and could disappear into tenuous melodic phrase . But when the Red Ghost was finally catch , it was not by a hardy cowhand who tracked it through the desert , but by a rancher who shot the beast in his tomato plant patch . That ’s when they discovered that the Red Ghost was just a average , reddish feral camel and a lot of tall tales .
All of the camel were eventually captured or killed , and the last feral camel , Topsy , die in a Los Angeles zoological garden in 1934 .
5. THE WEST IS CHOCK FULL OF MISSING MINES.
The supposititious location of the " Lost Dutchman Mine " by Alan English viaWikimedia Commons//CC BY - SA 2.0
With so much gold , silver , and Cu in the Wild West , it ’s no wonder there are so many tales of lost treasure troves throughout the westerly one-half of the country . There are dozens of such rumored treasure trove , including theSan Saba Gold Mine , theWheelbarrow Mine , andsome that do n’t even have a name . There are wholelists of these spotslocated throughout the United States , but specially in the Old West .
The most famous of these is probably the Lost Dutchman Mine . According to the legend , Jacob Waltz was a German prospector who research for atomic number 79 all over the United States , and he find it in Arizona ’s Superstition Mountains .
“ Near those mountains is the copious gold mine in the world,”he reportedly say his champion . But he died before he could tell any of them the accurate location .
Since then , the mine has become legendary . People spend their vacation searching for the Lost Dutchman . sale ofmaps purporting to take to the minewere once bustling . False discoveries have been made .
But the Lost Dutchman and the other miss mines have never been found . It ’s possible most of them never existed . But if those that did are ever found , somebody is going to make a lot of money .
6. SOME BELIEVE RED-HAIRED, CANNIBAL GIANTS ONCE ROAMED NEVADA.
Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins . Image credit : Wikimedia// Public Domain
According to the Northern Paiute people , red - hirsute cannibals once menaced Nevada . Sarah Winnemuccatells the news report in her 1883 book about her people ’s folklore and polish , LifeAmong the Piutes : Their Wrongs and Claims:“Among the traditions of our people is one of a pocket-size tribe of barbarians who used to live along the Humboldt River . It was many hundred years ago . They used to ambuscade my mass and kill and consume them . ” The Paiute , she went on to excuse , spend three geezerhood campaign the “ barbarians ” before cornering them in a cave , filling the cave with branches , and setting it on fervour . They plead with the crimson - hairy multitude to give up eating build , but got no answer , and burned the barbarians to death .
The Paiute story sounds like a folk taradiddle , and most likely is . But white settlers heading into Nevada were n’t so certain — nor were they beyond adding their own point to the story . For lesson , in her account , Hopkins never call the cannibal giants . That expression came later , bestow to the fable sometime between her book in 1883 and the find of human remains by guano miners in a cave in Lovelock , Nevada in 1911 .
Many of the artefact recover by the mineworker during that excavation vanish , which may be how legend that the miners find the skeletons of giants sprung up . While no whale stay have ever re-emerge , that has n’t terminate the rumor that the ruddy - haired cannibals were veridical . Even respected newspapers like theLos Angeles Timeshavereprinted the story that the mineworker found 7 - fundament mummies as fact .
7. THE BODIE CURSE HAS TOURISTS TREMBLING AFTER THEY TAKE HOME ARTIFACTS.
Chris Feichtner , Flickr //CC BY - NC 2.0
pull in souvenirs is a traditional part of traveling . Every practiced holidaymaker spot offers plenty oftchotchkesfor tourists to take home , either to think back their own trip or to share it with those who could n’t issue forth along .
But some tourists do n’t want to settle for the T - shirts and trinkets in the talent shop . Visitors have beenstealing bit of Arizona ’s Petrified Forest National Park for decades . In February of this year alone , a heavy ore car was stolen from Joshua Tree National Parkandthe Ahwahnee Hotel polarity was steal from Yosemite .
Bodie State Historic Park — the site of theWild West ghost township of Bodie — is no elision . The mining town on the border of California and Nevada was institute in 1877 and abandon in the 1940s , when mine in the region dried up . The state of California took it over and turn it into a park in 1962 — and tourists have been stealing artifact ever since .
But here ’s where Bodie differs from other park plagued by swipe : Many of the artifacts take from the town are later on turn back . Ranger at the parkregularly receive letters from people who claim to have stolen an detail , only to have their luck turn dour . holidaymaker who have take historic items report that their portion work sharply downhill after the thefts . They impute car accident , unemployment , chronic illness , and more to the Bodie Curse . ( There ’s even a book calledBad destiny , Hot Rockscollecting these letters . )
In 1996 , forest fire fighter reported people driving from as far as San Francisco , a six - 60 minutes trip , to return items to the accurate place they were taken from . One visitant evenstopped to revert a nail that punctured her tireas she drove through the townspeople .
No one seems to roll in the hay what ’s behind the curse , but many think that Bodie puts the “ specter ” in ghost town . visitor to the townspeople have reportedseeing foreign light and hearing spectral medicine . One ranger said he ’d never seen , heard , or smelled any of the foreign things others do , but that he does get a foreign feeling when working on the buildings .
Is Bodie really haunted or cursed ? Logic says no — but system of logic also says it ’s probably beneficial not to steal anything when visiting the old mining town .
