Los Bandidos - Black Bart Traditional Cache
Los Bandidos - Black Bart
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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Los bandidos
A real danger for stagecoach travellers on local or long haul lines was the risk of robbery by highwaymen, road agents, or bandits, right up into the early 20th Century. Cash payrolls and bank transfers were regularly carried by these scheduled stage lines. California saw the first stagecoach robbery in April 1852, when a Nevada City stage was robbed outside Illinoistown.
Charles Earl Bowles (b.1829; d.after 1888), better known as Black Bart, was an English-born American Old West outlaw noted for his poetic messages left after two of his robberies. Also known as Charles Bolton, C.E. Bolton and Black Bart the Po8 (poet), he was a gentleman bandit with a reputation for style and sophistication. Also one of the most notorious stagecoach robbers to operate in and around Northern California and southern Oregon during the 1870s and 1880s, amassing a known 28 stage robberies in that time..
There is no record of Bart every firing a shot in any of his robberies. Bart, however, was not so lucky. During one robbery a bullet shot at him grazed his head and left a scar. In his final robbery he was shot in the hand. Black Bart's downfall was an elegant handkerchief he inadvertently dropped, with the laundry mark FX07. Detectives scoured the San Francisco laundries, and eventually zeroed in on one Charles Bolton (His real name was Boles.) the name under which he had been living for years. When he was booked, he gave his name as T.Z. Spalding. Bart was tried, convicted and sentenced to San Quentin prison. He served a five year sentence and was released early in 1888..
Is that the end of the story? Not a chance! Within a year of release, he disappeared from sight, perhaps living off the remainder of the loot previously robbed during his "career" as California's gentleman bandit. Others believed the reports of stage robberies may have actually been Black Bart again, back to his old ways. Wells Fargo finally closed its last stage route in 1895, but eventually gave up its search for Black Bart's unrecovered millions.
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