Publisher's Synopsis
This book is the successor to Mike Bell's 2019 book Who Are Those Guys? and the follow-up Watching the Detectives, which explored the creation and operation of the Union Pacific's Mounted Rangers, popularly known as the Bandit Hunters. In the spring of 1902 the Union Pacific ran out of patience with the traditional methods of dealing with train robbers. Long chases after robbers who had frequent changes of horses and a friendly local population had proved to be largely ineffective in preventing attacks on the railroad. To deter attacks the Union Pacific hired Tim Keliher, former Sheriff of Lincoln County, Nebraska, to lead the Wyoming Division of the Special Service. Keliher and his boss, William T. Canada, hired the best lawmen, hunters, and riflemen they could find, arranged for a special train and the best horses they could find and created the Union Pacific Mounted Rangers- the Bandit Hunters. The Bandit Hunters were so effective that there were no major attacks on the Union Pacific for more than fifteen years. The success of the Bandit Hunters was due, in part, to a major publicity campaign that made it clear that they were patrolling the Bandit Belt, from Cheyenne, Wyoming, to the Utah line. By 1905 the Bandit Hunters had been stood down, but the legend went on. They featured heavily in Buffalo Bill's triumphant tour of the United States in 1906 and 1907 that played to packed arenas across the country. And the Bandit Hunters played a central part in the 1969 film, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The fact that they were created a year after the two outlaws had left the United States was a minor inconvenience to the scriptwriters. Almost one of the last acts of the Bandit Hunters was to have their photographs taken as part of the 1905 publicity campaign, photographs that have been used to illustrate many books on Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch and are still claimed to be pictures of the posse that pursued the Tipton train robbers. In this work Mike Bell reveals when and where the famous photographs were taken.
