Tombstone Epitaph Newspaper Vol. CXXII No. 1.
"The worst trail town in Arizona-perhaps the entire West"..."the toughest Hellhole in the West"... and "the West's most deadly town" are only a few of the phrases used to describe the railroad town of Canyon Diablo, which came into existence in 1880, the town taking the name of the canyon.
In 1853, Captain Ameil Whipple, then with the Ives Party, an expedition making a preliminary survey for a possible railroad route to California, followed the 35th parallel which crosses upstream from the modern-day location of Two Guns, the exit on Interstate 40 leading to Canyon Diablo. In December, the party reached the deep gorge that Whipple called Canyon Diablo, or Devil's Canyon, describing it as a chasm which could be bridged by a railroad. The depth of the chasm was 255 feet. This railroad project was started in 1880 by the westward approach of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad coming from Albuquerque New Mexico and through Winslow, Arizona as they laid tracks towards Needles, California. The tracks stopped at the gorge, awaiting bridge construction, and the deadly town of Canyon Diablo sprang into existence.
Upon reaching the canyon the railroad company encountered financial difficulties and could not immediately bridge the gorge. During the period of reorganization, from the summer of 1881 until late in 1882 before work resumed, the booming town of Canyon Diablo roared day and night. It was a shack town, Two lines of buildings faced each other across the rocky road on the north line of the right-of-way. They extended east one mile from the yellow-painted depot. Between 1880 and 1882, more killings as a results of gunfights, robberies, and murders took place there than in Tombstone, Dodge City, and Abilene, Kansas combined. If Tombstone was noted for "having a man for breakfast every morning," then it could be said that Canyon Diablo "had a man for breakfast, lunch, and supper every day." Until the town had a "boothill cemetery," bodies were buried where they were found. Murder on the street was common. Holdups were almost an hourly occurrence between 1880 and 1882 in this town of approximately 2,000 untamed souls, most of whom used aliases, since they were on the run from the law in some form or another. Newcomers to Canyon Diablo were often beaten or killed on the mere suspicion that they were carrying valuables.
Canyon Diablo was the railhead for Flagstaff, Prescott and other towns west and south. Long wagon freight trains of goods passed north along the east canyon rim to the old crossing. Swinging west, freighters made stops at Walnut Tanks and Turkey Tanks on the slow forty mile haul into the cedar and pine forests surrounding Flagstaff on the mountain. Other routes fanned out from the small town as well. A regular stage line also operated between Flagstaff and Canyon Diablo. Short passenger train runs were made daily from the division yards at Winslow. Railroad freight trains unloaded at Canyon Diablo. Wagons waited to haul this merchandise, saloon potables, sawmill and mining machinery on towards Flagstaff and Prescott. Near the depot on railroad land were located the section crew's house, stock pens, a water tank (pumped out of the canyon's depth at that time), freight docks and warehouses.
Not only the stagecoaches hauling money but the freight trains were subject to robbery by unorganized gangs. They were footloose drifters in hard luck who came west looking for a place to settle. Killers and badly wanted criminals composed the bulk of their hardened numbers. Aptly named, Canyon Diablo seemed to attract the lower end of humanity in its brief but violent existence. Almost all the transient residents of Canyon Diablo were railroad construction workers, cowboys, prospectors, hunters, gamblers, prostitutes, ex-Civil War soldiers, thieves, and cutthroats. Hell Street (the main street in town) was lined with 14 saloons, 10 gambling dens, four houses of prostitution, two dance pavilions (which were nothing more than brothels themselves), several sleazy restaurants, and a few honest businesses. None of the shacks were substantial buildings, being green lumber frames covered with tin, tar paper, and canvas. Wedged between these places were eating counters, and a grocery and dry goods store. Few had a name lettered on their drab, unpainted false fronts. Changing ownership of a saloon or gambling-parlor business in Canyon Diablo was by the simple expedient of gunning down the then claimer in possession. That was how Keno Harry, never known by any other name, obtained his poker flat. That was also how he lost it. Planted in boothill, his wooden board grave marker had painted on it in black letters:
Keno Harry
1882
Among this motley collection of clip-joints were the Colorado and Texas saloons, the Last Drink, Road To Ruin, Bughouse Joe's and Name Your Pizen. The main dance pavilion was the Cootchy-Klatch, where alleged young female singers sang nostalgic melodies. In between appearances, the painted hags pulled double duty in the bordellos. The houses of prostitution were untitled. The favorites were owned by Clabberfoot Annie and Bull Shit Mary. Both gained fame, of a sort. Clabberfoot Annie was not so deformed but a handsome woman with an hourglass figure when corseted and wearing silks. B. S. Mary was buxom, rawboned, stood about six feet tall and was strictly a skidroad bawd. Their competitive places faced each other across the dusty, stony road. Liking their red eye, both were usually plastered. Their joints were noted for a steady stream of pretty girls passing through them. Old timers told many a misty-eyed tale of some of the fanciest to sojourn there. A few local stockmen married some of them.
The fame, or infamy, of Clabberfoot Annie and B. S. Mary resulted from constant bickering and hair pulling fights. When one or the other considered herself particularly abused she stood on the narrow wooden porch before her joint yelling insults across the road. On prompt appearance of the other they stood calling each other all the vile names not in the book. When one had been insulted beyond endurance she rushed into the street. Both always collided there. A fast-gathering populace was regularly entertained by their screeching battles, in which arguments invariably ended after the exchange of picturesque descriptions of each other's antecedents. Men in the close-packed crowd ringing the combatants yelled oath-filled encouragement to whichever one he favored at the moment. Bloody noses, black eyes and torn-out hair resulted. Sometimes one managed to tear off every shred of clothing the other wore, much to the spectators' delight. One time Clabberfoot Annie, instead of meeting B. S. Mary in clawing combat, rushed back inside her diggings, momentarily reappearing with a double-barreled shotgun, she let both tubes thunder birdshot into B. S. Mary's broad bottom while she ran pell mell from the unexpected onslaught.
In this wild, untamed town the death rate was high. A boothill was established south of the tracks near the very beginning. At one time 35 graves could be counted in it. Some had wooden head-boards that have rotted away. A few were enclosed by wooden picket fences, which have been torn down and carried off by souvenir hunters. A pile of stones was heaped protectively over several. Today only those graves protected by rocks, and one with a curb and iron pipe frame railing enclosing a blue granite headstone, can be located. The upright stone marks the grave of the only man buried there who died peacefully with his boots off. He was Herman Wolf, the trader off the river who passed on in September 1899, long after Canyon Diablo town had vanished. Only one woman was buried there. She worked in Clabberfoot Annie's house. One morning she was found with her throat thoroughly sliced, the deed accomplished by an inmate of B. S. Mary's place who mistook her bunk for that of Clabberfoot Annie. Boothill did not by far contain all the bodies put away at Canyon Diablo. More graves of the nameless are scattered north and south of the tracks, and east of the canyon rim. The incumbents of this real estate were planted where their bodies were found.
Flagstaff merchants and especially the saloon owners, could never depend on a freight train load of goods reaching them intact. Even the several sawmill operators lost or had machinery and replacement parts damaged beyond use while en route. The freighters themselves were also robbed. Several times, enraged because they found nothing spendable, the outlaws burned the freighter's wagons. E. E. Ayer, who owned the largest lumber mill in the southwest at Flagstaff, arrived at the end of the railroad for the purpose of establishing a mill. The lawless conditions stunned him. But he had enough political power to demand and receive an escort of soldiers from Fort Defiance. With them he got his machinery through. But the presence of troops hardly caused the criminal element to pause in their depredations.
The sawmill men and Flagstaff merchants organized, and provided a good salary for a marshal at Canyon Diablo to keep outlaws under control. The businessmen at end-of-the-tracks had only to hire the marshal. This proved more difficult than providing the officer's salary. The town had a rapid succession of peace officers. The first one pinned on the badge at three o'clock in the afternoon; at eight that night he was laid our for burial. The second one lasted two whole weeks. The third was a sneaky, chinchy character who carried a sawed-off shotgun. When he got a bad actor he also liberally sprinkled innocent bystanders with double-0 pellets. At the end of three weeks, forty-five lead slugs fired by a disgruntled man, peppered between the shoulder blades, ended this peace officer's usefulness. The fourth was a gnarled little man owning piggish black eyes who made a deal with the outlaw element. He actually served six days before a bandit's abused victim turned a blazing gun muzzle on him point blank in the dark.
Weeks passed without a town marshal. Finally, in rode a sallow-cheeked, gaunt, consumptive who was an ex-preacher from Texas. Spotted entering town by the hiring committee standing before Keno Harry's Poker Flat, they discovered that he wore two low slung guns. Forthwith they propositioned him. Being broke and hungry, he accepted the chance to start eating regularly again.
When asked his name for the record he hesitated overly long. Glancing down at the striped ducking pants he wore, he replied smugly that he reckoned he was "Bill Duckin." Although he lasted a full thirty days, he died before collecting his first month's salary. During that period he killed a man a day and wounded so many that the railroad hospital at Winslow refused to accept any more gunshot victims.
Duckin passed from this world on a Sunday morning because prosperity ruined him. Flush with money after putting the squeeze on all the joints, he decked himself out in fancy clothes. Imitating famous marshals of the day, he also provided himself with two black two-button bob-tailed coats. The everyday coat had the side pockets cut out. Thus, while wearing it he could shove both hands down, grasp gun butts, and thrust the long barrels through between the coat edges since the holsters hung on swivels with the bottoms lopped off. In this tricky way he literally scared badmen to death. The second coat was kept unaltered for Sunday wear. On the fatal morning he strolled along the street in the good coat; not that he was going to church. There wasn't one to care for the unspiritual needs of the two thousand denizens then inhabiting the town. Duckin was headed for Ching Wong's beef stew counter for breakfast. Out of the Colorado Saloon backed a man wearing a black derby hat. Holding a sack of loot in his left hand, he carried a smoking gun in his right. Halting, Duckin, resting hands in side coat pockets, ordered him to surrender. Instead, the bandit opened fire. Too late Duckin realized that he was wearing his Sunday coat. Exit town marshal Duckin; and no slow walking and lonesome singing.
His successor was Joseph (Fighting Joe) Fowler, who had tamed the booming roar of bad actors in Gallup, New Mexico, when the railroad reached there. A real toughie without a doubt, he had killed twenty men during his gunfighting career. Fighting Joe lasted ten days before outlaws put the Indian sign on him. After three narrow squeaks escaping alive in bushwhack deals, he returned to New Mexico without announcing his sudden departure. Subsequently a sheriff named Harvey H. Whitehill battled him hand to hand in a stand-off fight before being able to haul him off to the Silver City juzgado. That night an ingrate mob took Fighting Joe from behind bars and decorated a tree with him. (Editor's note: "Fighting Joe" Fowler should not be confused with one Joel Fowler, who was also lynched, but in Socorro, New Mexico, January 23, 1884)
Flagstaff was then in Yavapai County, the seat of government being at Prescott more than two hundred miles away. County officials refused to furnish officers to maintain law and order at Canyon Diablo. Why send one there merely to have him killed. Desperate, Flagstaff business men appealed to Territorial Governor Frederick A. Tirtle for help. He requested the army to step in and restore order. While the army moved with its habitual slowness, the presence of troops became unnecessary. Reorganized and with new funds pumped into the company, the gorge of Canyon Diablo was bridged, the railroad built on west to California. The rip-snorting town of malevolent evil died overnight.
The year 1886 was the year when Fred W. Volz established a trading post at Canyon Diablo. The trading post was built near the southwestern boundary of the Navajo reservation, and just a few yards away from the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad depot at Canyon Diablo. Mr. Volz was to remain there until 1910, establishing both a U.S. Post Office and a Wells Fargo Station at the trading post. Since the Post was painted white, the Navajo referred to it as Kinigai (White House). Their name for the Canyon was Kinigai Boko (White House Canyon). Fred Volz and his wife were married during these years and had one daughter, Jeanette, who lived there from 1890 to 1910.
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Volz played a role in documenting one of the most bizarre shootouts ever to take place in the West. This shootout lasted all of three seconds, as compared to Tombstone's famous gunfight at the OK Corral, which lasted around 30 seconds. All four combatants in Canyon Diablo emptied their six-guns in what eyewitnesses described as "a single explosion." Surprisingly, only one person was killed.
It all started shortly before midnight on April 7, 1905, when two well-dressed young men, later identified as John Shaw and William Smythe, walked into the Wig Wam Saloon in Winslow. Standing at the bar, they ordered a couple of whiskeys and looked around the room. One poker table, rimmed with stacks of silver dollars, caught their eye. Without saying a word or drinking their whiskey, they both moved toward the table, drawing their six-guns as they went. They proceeded to clean out the seven gamblers seated around the table of somewhere between $400 and $650 in silver dollars. Stuffing the coins into their coat and pants pockets and into their hats, Shaw and Smythe slowly backed out the door and disappeared.
Navajo County Deputy Sheriff Pete Pemberton was immediately notified. He, in turn, wired Navajo County Sheriff Chet Houck (younger brother of Jim Houck of Pleasant Valley War fame) in Holbrook. Pemberton and Winslow City Marshal Bob Giles found a trail of silver coins leading to the train tracks, and they assumed the robbers had hopped the westbound train to Flagstaff.
Houck and Pemberton boarded the next train to Flagstaff, hoping to join in the search now going on for the two robbers. No trace of them could be found in Flagstaff, so the lawman took the next train back to Winslow on the afternoon of April 8. While on the trip back, they learned that two men had been seen hiding in the brush near the right-of-way at Canyon Diablo. Stopping the train a couple of miles past Canyon Diablo, Houck and Pemberton went back toward the town on foot. The sun was just setting over the distant San Francisco Peaks when they reached Canyon Diablo.
There they met Fred Volz, former railroad telegrapher turned Indian trader to the Navajos and Hopis. Volz told Houck and Pemberton that he had noticed two suspicious-looking characters hanging around the trading post all day. At that moment, Houck and Pemberton spotted the two men and approached them after they rounded a building. as they came within six to eight feet of one another, the two lawmen asked to search them. One of the outlaws responded, "No one searches us!" Immediately, all four men jerked their six-guns and began to firing in rapid succession. To eyewitnesses, the shooting was so rapid that it sounded like one huge explosion. It was over in about three seconds, leaving one dead and one wounded. The dead man was John Shaw, and the wounded man was William Smythe, later identified as ex-convict William Evans. Twenty-one shots were fired in this extremely short time span. After Shaw was searched, his body was placed in a pine box donated by Fred Volz, and he was buried in a shallow grave (because of the extremely rocky soil) in the Canyon Diablo cemetery.
The same night following the shootout, some cowboys from Hashknife outfit were getting drunk in the Wig Wam Saloon and talking about how Shaw had not finished the whiskey he paid for the previous night. Intent on correcting this "injustice," they decided to go to Canyon Diablo, dig him up, and pour him the last drink of whiskey they figured was rightly his. So 15 drunken cowboys, each with a bottle of whiskey, hitched a ride on the Santa Fe back to Canyon Diablo. Arriving there around dawn, they woke up Fred Volz, who gave them some shovels and a Kodak camera. While digging up Shaw and hauling him out of his coffin to pour his last drink, the cowboys noticed a slight smile on his face. This was enough to wipe the smiles from their faces and dissipate their own hilarity. The countenance of John Shaw brought tears to many of the onlookers eyes. Affected the most was the Hashknife cowboys, many of whom were on the run from the law in Texas and using assumed names. They probably saw their own wild past reflected in the blank eyes staring from the coffin. Rigor mortis had already set in, so they propped Shaw up on a nearby fence, poured a plentiful gulp of whiskey between his clenched teeth, and took photographs while they did so. As Shaw was replanted with the half-empty bottle of whiskey, the cowboys stood around with their hats off. This macabre event evidently sobered the cowboys, who, realizing what they had done, went home subdued. The 4 photographs taken of John Shaw getting his last drink of whisky sat on the bar back mirror at the Wig Wam Saloon for a number of years.
Today, nothing much is left of canyon Diablo but fragments of buildings and heaps of silent stones to mark what was once a town named after and owned by the devil.
The cache is located on the south side of the fence line that borders the townsite. Please do not deface or damage any of the ruins. Please do not paint or in any other way leave graffiti or other markings on any of the ruins. Please help preserve this remnant of America's Wild West for others to enjoy. Coordinates for Boot Hill Cemetery & Herman Wolf's grave are: 35.160357, -111.117753. Coordinates for Fred Volz's trading post are: 35.164431, -111.117683. Coordinates for Hell Street which ran parallel to the railroad tracks: 35.162970, -111.115817. Coordinates to other ruins near Hell Street: 35.162443, -111.113741. Coordinates to view the Canyon Diablo Railroad Bridge: 35.166238, -111.126440.
Take a look in the gallery for some photos that will bring some of this wild west town to life.
Credit to Harry McNeer, Gladwell Richardson & Ann T. Strickland for the history outlined above.
Swag for "First To Find" includes a few railroad items. One copy of BNSF's Southwest Division Timetable, One copy of BNSF's Airbrake & Train Handling Rules and one copy of BNSF's Seligman Subdivision Track Chart Winslow, Arizona to Needles, California. Driving to Canyon Diablo can be done in most vehicles however if you are in a regular car that has low ground clearance you must drive slowly and pay careful attention to where you place your tires while watching for rocks that could damage your car. Higher ground clearance vehicles are recommended but not required. I placed this cache driving a Honda Civic Hybrid with no damage to my car. Common Sense, Caution & a Slow Pace will get you there and back. Any spoilers included in logs or photos will be deleted. Please log DNFs & pertinent notes. These are very important to me in tracking the condition of the cache & maintaining it in a good condition for searchers.
Congrats to "First To Find" "magashi", todays history pioneer!!! 2015-04-24
