Hey, friends. It's Glenn with the almost world famous Cactus Atlas
and today I'm going to be exploring a little bit of the history of this
fascinating town named Bisbee, Arizona.
Today is with many old ex-mining towns, Bisbee's a very artsy community.
So if you're really into that kind of thing you're going to find plenty of that here.
I love that kind of stuff. Art shops. Like lots of little saloons and bars and restaurants.
But the history is why I really came here today.
The history I've come searching for though I think took place
before this was really built up like this. Back in the days of the Old West.
1883 is the time I'm interested in right now
as I walk down towards the heart of the downtown area.
So I speculate that almost every one of you out there is familiar with the story
of the OK Corral, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holiday.
The shootout that happened there in 1881.
Probably one of the most newsworthy events that came out of this region.
There's another one though that happened just a couple years later
in 1883 which was probably a little bit more bloody and brutal I would say.
We're gonna go try to see if we can track down where that happened.
So enter the current Letson Block and the Letson Loft Hotel. Located right here.
That's the spot of something very brutal that happened in 1883
known as the Bisbee Massacre.
[Music]
So in 1883, this main street would have looked a lot different.
Would have been a lot more wooden buildings and a lot more spread out but
the important thing is the building that now stands here was
once home to A. A. Castaneda's General Merchandise Emporium,
the site of the brutal massacre that occurred here.
Between the hours of seven and eight o'clock on the evening
of December 8th of 1883, five men hitched their horses and
made their way to A. A. Castaneda General Mercantile Emporium.
This is where the men believed several thousand dollars of mining payroll was being stored.
A couple bandits stood outside the store to keep watch while the other men went to work inside.
Outside the store, John C. Tappeiner and his friend were exiting
the Bon Ton Saloon, just one door down,
When the armed bandits outside spotted them and ordered them back inside.
Tappeiner's friend fled but Tappeiner stood his ground.
He was shot at twice.
The first bullet missing and the second being a headshot.
Tappeiner dropped where he stood, his brains on the porch,
according to one eyewitness testimony.
The Bisbee Massacre had begun.
The bandits killed without hesitation and shot up the streets of Bisbee
all for what amounted to $800 and stolen goods.
The ironic twist is that the mining payroll had not yet arrived but that same night,
a Bisbee resident passed the stagecoach containing the payroll on his way to inform
Tombstone officials of the murders.
All in all, four innocent people lost their lives.
Among them, a lawmen and a pregnant woman.
The most tragic one though of the tale was a lady I believe her name was Annie Roberts.
She probably came out of a restaurant or establishment on this side of the street if I'm not mistaken.
There was a light on the establishment so the shooters... who knows if they knew it was a lady
but she was actually pregnant and was killed.
I mean back in the Victorian Age, that was a no-no as it is today too
but the people of that time did not like that.
Then those five men were hung in Tombstone, Arizona
and a six that was implicated in all this, some said he was innocent,
was lynched in Tombstone.
Very newsworthy.
Probably a higher body count than the shoot out of the OK Corral
but, yeah, know that the shootout the OK Corral is not the only game in town.
Weird to stand here today in 2021 and to know that on December 8th of 1883,
which is less than a week away from now, it's December the 3rd today,
the evening of December 8th all of that brutal murdering happened right here.
Very senseless it seemed. They were very unprofessional robbers from the sound of it.
Word of the Bisbee Massacre traveled as far as Hawaii through the news industry of the time.
As soon as word reached Tombstone, the governmental center of Cochise County
at the time, the manhunt began.
It would not take long to round up the men.
I mean one of them didn't even bother wearing a mask during the robbery.
Of particular interest here is the case of one John Heath.
Heath was not one of the armed bandits that robbed Castaneda's store
but during the manhunt, in which Heath participated, he aroused the suspicions of the other men
and was uncovered to be in cahoots with the other bandits.
All five of the men who robbed Castaneda's store were apprehended
with Heath being named the sixth participant as well as the organizer of the crime.
Through the magic of instant travel, I've teleported myself from Bisbee to Tombstone
to come check out the Tombstone courthouse.
There's some history about the Bisbee Massacre here that we want to check out.
This courthouse is where the five bandits were tried and the courtroom is still here.
[Music]
This is the Tombstone County courthouse.
This was the county seat back when the Bisbee Massacre happened
and this is where the five men that were participants in that crime were tried
and sentenced to death.
The crowds gathered at Tombstone courthouse as the men started to be brought in.
Even the good folk of the Old West went wild for their true crime.
At 9 a.m on February 9th of 1884 the trial began for the five men
that robbed Castaneda's mercantile.
Just a couple short days later, the jury delivered their verdict...
guilty of murder in the first degree.
According to territorial law of the time, if a murder is committed during the act
of another crime such as robbing a bank then all participants can be charged
with murder and equally sentenced.
Didn't matter if you didn't do the actual killing.
And so it was for the five participants of the robbery.
They were all sentenced to death by hanging.
Just imagine if we can go back in time and witness the trial.
It's the jury box over there.
I could be wrong but I assume those were spittoons.
So the jury was probably chewing tobacco and spitting.
If I'm wrong let me know but that would make sense to me.
Well, probably not a big surprise that, like I said,
the five men that participated in the Bisbee Massacre were sentenced to death
and hung here at the courthouse.
We're gonna go check that out but before we do let's take a couple last looks
at this amazing piece of history here.
I was told by someone that works here who really knew her history well,
maybe she's a historian I'm not sure,
that this is the 1904 version of this courthouse.
It was renovated a little bit but she said it's pretty close
to what you could have expected back in the day if you were here.
What I wouldn't do just to be able to go sit up there where the judge would have been
with a gavel and just said guilty and smash the gavel into the thing.
That would make this episode but I don't think they'd like that if I did that.
John Heath, who had a separate trial, was also found guilty
but since he did not directly participate in the robbery itself
he was sentenced to life at Arizona Territorial Prison in Yuma.
Even though the prospect of life in prison in a hell hole
like the Arizona Territorial Prison might be worse than death to some
the people of Tombstone, Arizona did not think so.
On the morning of February 22nd of 1884,
a lynching was about to go down.
A large group of citizens descended on the Tombstone courthouse and
extracted Heath leading him down Toughnut Street towards a telegraph pole.
There he was hung.
His last request being to not be shot after being hung
but he was shot by the well-known photographer C.S Fly
who made an appearance at the event.
I almost don't believe it. I did not know this was here.
Look at this. This is the spot where John Heath was lynched
by an angry mob of miners in 1884. Look at that.
It's the actual remains of the telegraph pole that he was hung from.
How eerie.
I'm trying to approximate the angle that that photo of John Heath was taken
and I'm pretty sure it was taken looking in this direction because
I'm lining up those hills in the background that you can very faintly see in the original photo.
Right now you've got other things obstructing the view but you don't see
the courthouse or anything else around me
in the photo over there so
I'm pretty sure... It's very eerie. I wish that tree wasn't there
But this is about that angle.
Yeah, this is really eerie and weird to look at that old picture and realize it happened right here
in this very spot. Man.
You really gotta dig around to find the cool stuff.
The real history. Not that tourist junk.
As for the other five fellas,
they got to hang around a bit longer while a gallows was constructed to serve their punishment.
[Creaking of old wooden stairs]
Here's what we're looking for. The gallows.
This is an example of an invitation to a hanging.
Imagine getting one of these in your mail.
Oh and look at this.
One, two, three, four, five.
Those are the names of the men that participated in the Bisbee Massacre.
Over a month after Heath's lynching on the early afternoon of March 28th,
crowds gathered in and around the courthouse to witness the hanging.
This is a really amazing article.
I just read the whole thing but this is a recounting by this guy, Ernest Eberhardy.
He was a kid when the hangings happened at the gallows outside and
this recounts what the bandits each said when they each got their turn.
He busted out of school.
He was the only kid because he was only I think about 10 years old or so
when the hangings happened and he saw it.
[Music]
This is not the original gallows that was used to hang the Bisbee Massacre participants.
This is a recreation of what the actual one looked like.
The real one burnt down in one of the big fires here in Tombstone.
Probably in the early 1900s I think is what the person said but
this should be an accurate recreation of what was here
and we can imagine, like, those men being hung,
their necks snapping as the trap door opened, and they fell through
giving them hopefully a quick death.
Most likely. I'm sure they died almost instantly doing it that way.
All five men were pronounced dead about 30 minutes after the trap doors dropped.
Their bodies were put into simple caskets and transported to Boot Hill Cemetery.
Alright, before we transport back to the town of Bisbee,
our last thing here to see in Tombstone would be the graves of the five bandits
responsible for the Bisbee Massacre.
One, two,
three, four, five. Five graves.
[Music]
And you remember John Heath?
Sometimes we saw his name today spelled as H-E-I-T-H
and in the book I'm reading and in other accounts, it's spelled like this.
The interesting thing is I heard that he's actually not buried here.
He was actually transported to his home state of Texas to be buried.
So my question always has been if he's not buried here
is there a body here or is it just a memorial to the guy
or is he actually buried here?
[Music fades]
I don't think there's a more fitting place to end our tour of Bisbee as I walk
right under the
sign that marks the location of where that Bisbee Massacre took place.
Back in 1883. I still can't believe it.
Anyway.
I am gonna have to part ways with you now and I wanted to do so much more
and dig so much more into the history but I got a full-time job.
Gotta figure out a way to do this full-time one day.
Until then we'll be back here and I'll see you next time.
[Music]