At a recent meeting of Largs Probus Club, Stuart Craig gave a very interesting talk on Butch Cassidy, The Sundance Kid and their association with the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang, a loosely organised group of outlaws operating in the late 1800s in the American West. Despite the name, it wasn’t a single fixed gang with strict membership—it was more like a rotating network of criminals who used a remote hideout called Hole-in-the-Wall Pass in Wyoming as a base. The group included several well-known outlaws, most famously Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, and others like Kid Curry and Elzy Lay were also associated at different times.
Stuart advised that Butch Cassidy (real name Robert LeRoy Parker) was one of the central figures who led a more specific subgroup called the Wild Bunch. Cassidy was known for being unusually nonviolent for an outlaw—he preferred planning clever train and bank robberies with minimal bloodshed, and he used the Hole-in-the-Wall hideout as a safe base to regroup after robberies. The Hole-in-the-Wall Pass itself was ideal as it was hidden in rugged terrain in Wyoming which made it difficult for lawmen to access and included cabins and natural defences. The Sundance Kid (Harry Longabaugh) was Cassidy’s closest partner. He had a reputation as a skilled gunman, more dangerous than Cassidy, and the two worked closely together in robberies and escapes, forming one of the most famous outlaw duos in American history. The broader network (including Cassidy and Sundance) carried out train robberies (notably Union Pacific trains), bank robberies across states like Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah and cattle rustling.
One of the earliest robberies attributed to Cassidy was at Telluride in Colorado in 1889 when the gang reportedly stole around $20,000 from the San Miguel Valley Bank which helped establish Cassidy’s reputation. In 1896 Cassidy, Sundance, and others robbed the Bank of Montpelier in Idaho escaping with about $7,000 and in 1900 the Wild Bunch netted $32,000 robbing a bank in Winnemucca, Nevada netting roughly $32,000. They also robbed trains, blowing up a Union Pacific train safe near Wilcox, Wyoming in 1899 and netting between $30,000–$60,000 and a massive manhunt followed. A similar method – stopping a train and using explosives on the safe – was used in Tipton, Wyoming in 1900 and at Wagner, Montana in 1901.
Stuart advised that by the early 1900s law enforcement and private agencies like the Pinkerton National Detective Agency intensified efforts to track them and members were captured, killed, or scattered with Cassidy and Sundance fleeing to South America around 1901, continuing criminal activities in places like Argentina and Bolivia. They are widely believed to have died in a shootout in Bolivia around 1908 although their exact fate is still debated.
Morrison Sutherland thanked Stuart for an excellent talk illustrated by photographs taken at the time.
Why not join us at our next meeting?
New members are always welcomed at the Club. If you are 50 or over, retired, or nearing retirement, (men only, I’m afraid, sorry ladies) you can attend three meetings as a guest and find out what a relaxed and friendly time we have. That’s plenty of time to decide whether to become a Club member or not. Please check out our programme and fill in our Contact Form if you wish to attend as a guest, or to enquire about joining.
Largs Probus Club will next meet in the Willowbank Hotel on Wednesday 13th May at 10am when Marian McNeill will give a talk on the Inverclyde Sky Watchers, a friendly group of amateur astronomers.