Wells Fargo had bolted the strongbox to the floor inside the stage (which had no passengers that day). Bowles then tried to remove the strongbox from the stage. Bowles made McConnell unhitch the team and return with them over the crest again to the west side of the hill, where Rolleri encountered him. Rolleri learned that as the stage had approached the summit, Bowles had stepped out from behind a rock with his shotgun. He began walking up the stage road and, on nearing the summit, he encountered the stage driver and his team of horses. However, on arriving at the western side of the hill, he found that the stage was not there. Jimmy Rolleri had brought his rifle and got off at the bottom of the hill, intending to hunt along the creek at the southern base of the hill and then meet the stage at the bottom of the western grade. The stage had to travel up a steep road on the east side of Funk Hill. At the ferry crossing, the driver picked up Jimmy Rolleri, the 19-year-old son of the ferry owner. The stage had crossed the Reynolds Ferry on the old stage road from Sonora to Milton. The last holdup took place at the site, fittingly enough, of his first holdup, on Funk Hill, just southeast of the present town of Copperopolis. This first robbery netted Bowles just $160.Frederick Nolan, The Wild West: History, Myth & the Making of America (London: Arcturus Publishing Limited, 2003), p. Upon returning to the scene, he found that the men with rifles in the bushes were actually carefully rigged sticks. Shine waited until Bowles vanished and then went back to get the plundered box. Rifle barrels pointed at Shine from the nearby bushes, so he handed over the strongbox. He spoke with a deep and resonant tone and told John Shine, the stagecoach driver, "Please throw down the box." As Shine handed the strongbox, Bowles shouted, "If he dares to shoot, give him a solid volley, boys". What made the crime unusual was the politeness and good manners of the outlaw. On 26 July 1875, Bowles robbed his first stagecoach in Calaveras County, on the road between Copperopolis and Milton. These distinguishing features became his trademarks. His head was covered with a flour sack with eye holes, and he brandished a shotgun. He wore a long linen duster coat and a bowler hat. 131.īowles was always courteous and used no foul language (except for in poems). Through all his years as a highwayman, he never fired a gun.Frederick Nolan, The Wild West: History, Myth & the Making of America (London: Arcturus Publishing Limited, 2003), p. This, together with his poems, earned him notoriety. Black Bart was very successful and made off with thousands of dollars a year.īowles was terrified of horses and committed all of his robberies on foot. Although he only left two poems, at the fourth and fifth robbery sites, it became his signature and his biggest claim to fame. Bowles, as Black Bart, committed 28 robberies of Wells Fargo stagecoaches across northern California between 18, including a number of robberies along the historic Siskiyou Trail between California and Oregon.
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