Located in the Oklahoma Collection.

In October 1892 the notorious Dalton gang concluded their days of outlawry at Coffeyville, Kansas, with a bold attempt to rob two banks at once in broad daylight. The raiders--Bob, Grat, and Emmett Dalton, Bill Powers, and Dick Broadwell--were nothing more than common hoodlums, says author Robert Barr Smith. The real heroes of the day were the townspeople, who spontaneously turned out in haste and in force to dispatch the outlaws in a bloody downtown shoot-out. Smith sorts out the truth from the legends and suggests answers to some of the perplexing questions about the Coffeyville fight--including whether or not there was a sixth man who got away. In addition, Smith recounts the violent aftermath of the fight: the trial and later life of Emmett Dalton, the only outlaw to survive the raid; and the bloody ends of the Dalton gang’s successors, Bill Doolin and Bill Dalton.

DIVRon Hansen’s engrossing novel of the violent life and criminal exploits of the Dalton gang, as remembered by its last surviving member/divDIV From his home in Los Angeles, an aging Emmett Dalton reminisces about his glory days in America’s Wild West. Now sixty-five years old, and a Hollywood fixture, he makes a comfortable living selling stories of his earlier exploits to movie studios. But years before, he rode with his two brothers—charming, handsome, charismatic Bob, and the cold-eyed killer Grat, so wild and unpredictable that even his own family was afraid of him—committing brazen acts of robbery, bootlegging, and murder. As the last surviving member of the infamous Dalton gang, it’s Emmett’s responsibility to keep their legend alive. He has resolved to tell the full truth about the fabled career of the three criminal brothers and Eugenia Moore, the former schoolmarm who was an indispensable partner in their crimes, even if that truth turns out to be a darker, more painful, and less heroic picture than Hollywood’s moguls would make it out to be./divDIV /divDIVThe critically acclaimed debut novel by bestselling author Ron Hansen, Desperadoes is a masterwork of historical fiction that brings a fabled era of American outlaws and violence to breathtaking life./div

Train robbers, horse thieves, murderers. These are only a few of the accusations leveled against the Dalton Gang, the fraternal band of Western lawmen turned outlaws in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Daring in their exploits, the gang members turned their backs on laws they found to be criminally flawed and stole horses, bootlegged whiskey into Indian Territory, and committed the first American train robbery. A rare firsthand account originally published in 1918, this volume details the time when sheriffs were paid for each man they hanged, law enforcement rode under the banner of "Smith & Wesson" rather than "To Serve and Protect," and outlaws ruled the rails.

The name DALTON powerfully evokes the popular image of the Wild West Outlaw. The Dalton Gang made history with a bold attempt to rob two banks at once in Coffeyville, Kansas on October 5, 1892. There has been an avalanche of Dalton literature, most of it downright fictitious. THE DALTON GANG STORY, however, is a masterful effort to set the record straight and to tell the real story of this frontier family. Several Dalton brothers were first U.S. Deputy Marshals before turning to crime. The book is copiously illustrated with many fine photographs as well as reproductions of source documents, family Bible and court records, newspaper articles, etc. "The book is nearly dazzling. It is highly recommended as the premier source for Dalton Gang researchers."--Paul Meredith--VIOLENT KIN. "THE DALTON GANG STORY ranks as the new high standard for accurate and primary information on this famous lawman-outlaw family."--Doug Ellison--WESTERN OUTLAW-LAWMAN HISTORY ASSOCIATION JOURNAL. "...Compelling saga...profusely illustrated, well documented, attractively presented and, perhaps above all, enjoyable to read."--Joanne L. Nance--THE VIRGINIA GENEALOGICAL NEWSLETTER. "Samuelson did her homework well and made a good story about outlaws into a good work of history."--Chuck Parsons--TRUE WEST. "An excellent job of presenting the facts...writing style is terrific."--Marley Brant, author of THE OUTLAW YOUNGERS. Shooting Star Press, 8962 Canberra Dr., Sacramento, CA 95826. Phone: 916-363-8175.

Bill Doolin was perhaps the last great American outlaw of the nineteenth century. Once part of the Doolin-Dalton gang, he rode and robbed in the wild Indian Territory that would become Oklahoma. The Daltons were eventually shot to ribbons in their failed attempt to rob two banks at once in Coffeyville, Kansas. But Doolin went on to form a new gang that included notables such as Bitter Creek Newcomb, Black Face Charlie Pierce, a remaining Dalton brother, and the Rose of the Cimarron, Rose Dunn, sister of the notorious Dunn Brothers. Pursuing the gang was a tenacious group of U.S. marshals led by the famed Bill Tilghman. Doolin was considered something of a Robin Hood to the locals—everybody but those he robbed and killed. The marshals were determined to end his reign of terror no matter how long it took. The country, after all, was heading into a new century, and outlaws like Doolin no longer had a place in the West.

Gangs of outlaws were overrunning Oklahoma Territory when E. D. Nix was appointed U.S. marshal in 1893. His memoir evokes a time and place that brought criminals and merchants and cowpunchers and settlers together, often explosively. Oklahombres, originally published in 1929, is an authentic history of human wildness. In these pages the Dalton brothers are shown in full career, as well as the Doolin gang, Bitter Creek Newcomb, Henry Starr, Cattle Annie, Rolla Kapp, Dick Yeager, the Jennings boys, and a large cast of cattle thieves, counterfeiters, and whiskey peddlers. Lawmen are no less memorable than the lawless: Bill Tilghman, Chris Madsen, and Heck Thomas are among the deputies who help Nix in his cleaning-up campaign. Adding to the richness of this account of early days in Oklahoma Territory are such personages as Judge Isaac Parker, Rose of Cimarron, and Chief Bacon Rind of the Osage Indians. Nix himself emerges as a public official of great integrity. Because of his adherence to a code of honor, he could later say that during his administration "not a single man was killed who was not a notorious lawbreaker." Perhaps his proudest moment came when he fired the gun that sent homesteaders rushing into the Cherokee Strip on September 16, 1893. That scene, described with cinematic vividness, is one of many high points in Oklahombres.