Massacres, mayhem, and mischief fill the pages of Outlaw Tales of Utah, 2nd Edition. Ride with horse thieves and cattle rustlers, stagecoach, and train robbers. Duck the bullets of murderers, plot strategies with con artists, hiss at lawmen turned outlaws. A refreshing new perspective on some of the most infamous reprobates of the Midwest.

This book uncovers their astonishing true stories of the notorious Butch Cassidy, The Sundance Kid, Kid Curry, and Gunplay Maxwell, as well as those of equally raucous but lesser known outlaws and crimes from Utah history.

A refreshing new perspective on some of the most infamous reprobates of the West and Midwest.

From Jedediah Smith's final moments to persistent rumors of bigfoot, from the rise of an unlikely uranium magnate to the mysterious end of Butch Cassidy, this selection of twelve stories from Utah's past explores some of the Beehive State's most compelling mysteries and debunks some of its most famous myths.

The Wild Bunch, the confederation of western outlaws headed by Butch Cassidy, found sanctuary on the rugged Outlaw Trail. Stretching across Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico, this trail offered desert and mountain hideouts to bandits and cowboys. The almost inaccessible Hole-in-the-Wall in Wyoming was a station on the Outlaw Trail well known to Butch Cassidy. To the south, in Utah, was the inhospitable Robbers’ Roost, where Butch and his friends camped in 1897 after a robbery at Castle Gate. Charles Kelly recreates the mean and magnificent places frequented by the Wild Bunch and a slew of lesser outlaws. At the same time, he brings Butch Cassidy to life, traces his criminal apprenticeship and meeting with the Sundance Kid, and masterfully describes the exploits of the Wild Bunch.

"For a century Butch Cassidy has been the subject of legends about his life and death, spawning a small industry of mythmakers and a major Hollywood film. Charles Leerhsen sorts out fact from fiction to find the real Butch Cassidy, who is far more complicated and fascinating than legend has it"--

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the author of Into the Wild and Into Thin Air, this extraordinary work of investigative journalism takes readers inside America’s isolated Mormon Fundamentalist communities. • Now an acclaimed FX limited series streaming on HULU. “Fantastic.... Right up there with In Cold Blood and The Executioner’s Song.” —San Francisco Chronicle Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City, the renegade leaders of these Taliban-like theocracies are zealots who answer only to God; some 40,000 people still practice polygamy in these communities. At the core of Krakauer’s book are brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a commandment from God to kill a blameless woman and her baby girl. Beginning with a meticulously researched account of this appalling double murder, Krakauer constructs a multi-layered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, polygamy, savage violence, and unyielding faith. Along the way he uncovers a shadowy offshoot of America’s fastest growing religion, and raises provocative questions about the nature of religious belief.

Robbers Roost was a hideout for outlaws and hunted men long before Butch Cassidy found it in 1884. The impenetrable wastes and wilds of this high desert country in southeastern Utah, cut through by canyons along the Green and Colorado rivers and bounded on the west by the Dirty Devil, discouraged lawmen from pursuit. Growing up on a ranch that included Robbers Roost, Pearl Baker heard many of the legends about?and talked to many who remembered?the notorious Wild Bunch. In the 1890s they spread over Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, and Arizona rustling cattle, stealing horses, robbing banks and trains, and often taking cover at Robbers Roost. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Flat Nose George and the Curry boys, Elzy Lay, Gunplay Maxwell, the McCarty boys, Peep O'Day, Silver Tip, Blue John, and Indian Ed Newcomb?they all come to rip-roaring life while courting death in The Wild Bunch at Robbers Roost. In his introduction to the Bison Books edition, Floyd A. O'Neil, director of the American West Center at the University of Utah, discusses landscape, the law and the Wild Bunch, and Pearl Baker's lifelong preparation for this lively book.

Stories and legends from Uintah and Duchesne counties.