Having
had
enough,
Ketchum pointed his rifle at
the engineer and threatened to
kill him. Seeing the seriousness
of the situation, the Messenger
relented, chained his dog and
let Ketchum in.
Using much abusive lan-
guage and cursing, Ketchum
demanded that the Messenger
open the two Wells Fargo safes.
"I am a poor man and need
money!" he said.
The Messenger could not
open the large safe because it
was on a timer, so Ketchum
placed the smaller safe on top
of the larger and dynamited
both to open them up.
The blast, however, blew the
smaller safe through the roof
and wrecked the baggage car.
Ketchum and his man gathered
up about $6,000 in loot, most-
ly Mexican silver, then disap-
peared into the darkness.
To their credit, Ketchum
and his men did not bother
with the mail and the passen-
gers were not robbed.
The passengers didn’t know
what was happening until the
explosion was heard.
Ironically, the Messenger
gathered up an additional
$30,000 that the robbers
missed when it fell through the
floor boards after the explosion.
As soon as the train got to
the next station, Captain
Hughes and his Company D of
the Texas Rangers were sum-
moned and went to the site of
the robbery.
They spent several days
searching for the robbers, but
never caught them or retrieved
the
missing
money.
This was one of the few rob-
beries that went unresolved.
Black Jack Ketchum, how-
ever, was not to escape the long
arm of the law. He finally met
his end after holding up a Santa
Fe Railroad passenger train at
Folsom, NM, getting captured
and wounded in the process.
The conductor, having been
held up three times before,
finally had had enough and
took matters into his own
hands. He shot Ketchum with
a shotgun, causing him to lose
his arm.
He was tried, sentenced and
hung on April 26, 1901, at
Clayton, NM. It was the only
time a train robber was hung
for “felonious assault on a rail-
road,” and that judgment was
rendered unconstitutional after
Ketchum was executed.
The hanging was the first
(and only) in Union County,
NM, and the novice hangman
miscalculated the length of the
rope required.
When the trapdoor was
sprung, Ketchum’s body plum-
meted to the ground, separat-
ing the head, which was
cloaked in a black hood, and
sending it flying into the pit
beneath the scaffold. The head
was stitched back on for the
public viewing, but not before
a lurid postcard photo was
made.
Black Jack’s last words?
“Good-bye. Please dig my
grave very deep. All right; hurry
up.”
Probably a more fitting
answer would have been as
Cherokee Bill Goldsby gave to
that question: “Hell, no, I came
here to die, not to make a
speech.”
ST. JONAH
ORTHODOX CHURCH
Music To Your Ears
CDs • DVDs • Vinyl
Games • Special Orders
Come, See & Hear the Services
of Early Christianity
Mon-Fri 10-6
◊ 203 E Holland Ave, Alpine
Services: Sunday 10 am
405 E. Gallego Avenue • Alpine
432-360-3209 • stjonahalpine.org ringtailrecords@sbcglobal.net
on-line at: cenizojournal.com
Shop Alpine
Farmer’s
Market
Every Saturday morning at
9 a.m. on historic Murphy
Street (just East of 5th St.)
Get fresh veggies all year
plus baked goods, crafts
and more!
“New Beginnings are often disguised as painful endings” ~ Lao Tzu
D AVIS M OUNTAINS
N UT C OMPANY
432.837.1055
A LPINE G UEST Q UARTERS
Roasted and Dipped Pecans
You can taste the difference care makes!
Please stop in for FREE SAMPLES
Hwy 17 in Fort Davis • Open: Mon. - Sat. 9 to 5
Great handmade gourmet gifts!
We ship anywhere year-round
Visit us on the web: www.allpecans.com
800-895-2101 • 432-426-2101
dmnc@allpecans.com
Spacious one or two bedrooms
Downtown Alpine • Walk to Amtrak
Reservations online at:
GuestQuartersAlpineTX.com
AirBnB.com • 432.244.8500
Cenizo
Second Quarter 2019
23