Tombstone Epitaph Newspaper January 2002
Vol. CXXII No. 1.
"The worst trail town in Arizona-perhaps the entire West"..."the toughest Hellhole in the West"... and "the West's most deadly town" are only a few of the phrases used to describe the railroad town of Canyon Diablo, which came into existence in 1880, the town taking the name of the canyon.
In 1853, Captain Ameil Whipple, then with the Ives Party, an expedition making a preliminary survey for a possible railroad route to California, followed the 35th parallel which crosses upstream from the modern-day location of Two Guns, the exit on Interstate 40 leading to Canyon Diablo. In December, the party reached the deep gorge that Whipple called Canyon Diablo, or Devil's Canyon, describing it as a chasm which could be bridged by a railroad.
This project was started in 1880 by the westward approach of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad coming from Winslow, Arizona. The tracks stopped at the gorge, awaiting bridge construction, and the deadly town of Canyon Diablo sprang into existence.
Between 1880 and 1882, more killings as a results of gunfights, robberies, and murders took place there than in Tombstone, Dodge City, and Abilene, Kansas combined. If Tombstone was noted for "having a man for breakfast every morning," then it could be said that Canyon Diablo "had a man for breakfast, lunch, and supper every day."
Until the town had a "boothill cemetery," bodies were buried where they were found. Murder on the street was common. Holdups were almost an hourly occurrence between 1880 and 1882 in this town of approximately 2,000 untamed souls, most of whom used aliases, since they were on the run from the law in some form or another. Newcomers to Canyon Diablo were often beaten or killed on the mere suspicion that they were carrying valuables.
Aptly named, Canyon Diablo seemed to attract the lower end of humanity in its brief but violent existence. Where was law enforcement? Canyon Diablo had a rapid succession of peace officers. The first town marshal pinned on his badge at 3 p. m. and was laid out for burial at 8 p. m. the same day. All of his successors met with more or less the same fate, although they lasted at least a few days or few weeks longer. After one was buried, it would sometimes take several weeks before another future resident of Boothill was appointed.
Canyon Diablo had a total of seven marshals in 14 months, the last one fleeing for his life.
In 1881, the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad ran into financial difficulties, and the task of completing the Canyon Diablo bridge was taken over by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe
Railroad in 1882. After completion of the span, almost all the transient residents of Canyon Diablo - railroad construction workers, cowboys, prospectors, hunters, gamblers, prostitutes, ex-Civil War soldiers, thieves, and cutthroats - decided to move on. But before this happened, Hell Street (the main street in town) was lined with 14 saloons, 10 gambling dens, four houses of prostitution, two dance pavilions (which were nothing more than brothels themselves), several sleazy restaurants, and a few honest businesses.
Fred Volz's Indian Trading Post on "Hell Street" at Canyon Diablo in 1903. The front wall of Volz's stone building still stands today. Image courtesy Library of Congress.
In 1886, Fred Volz established an Indian trading post in Canyon Diablo, which was located on the southwestern boundary of the Navajo reservation. Volz and his wife stayed on until 1910, and played a role in documenting one of the most bizarre shootouts ever to take place in the West. This shootout lasted all of three seconds, as compared to Tombstone's famous gunfight at the OK Corral, which lasted around 30 seconds. All four combatants in Canyon Diablo emptied their six-guns in what eyewitnesses described as "a single explosion." Surprisingly, only one person was killed.
It all started shortly before midnight on April 7, 1905, when two well-dressed young men, later identified as John Shaw and William Smythe, walked into the Wig Wam Saloon in Winslow. Standing at the bar, they ordered a couple of whiskeys and looked around the room. One poker table, rimmed with stacks of silver dollars, caught their eye. Without saying a word or drinking their whiskey, they both moved toward the table, drawing their six-guns as they went. They proceeded to clean out the seven gamblers seated around the table of somewhere between $400 and $650 in silver dollars. Stuffing the coins into their coat and pants pockets and into their hats, Shaw and Smythe slowly backed out the door and disappeared.
Navajo County Deputy Sheriff Pete Pemberton was immediately notified. He, in turn, wired Navajo County Sheriff Chet Houck (younger brother of Jim Houck of Pleasant Valley War fame) in Holbrook. Pemberton and Winslow City Marshal Bob Giles found a trail of silver coins leading to the train tracks, and they assumed the robbers had hopped the westbound train to Flagstaff.
Houck and Pemberton boarded the next train to Flagstaff, hoping to join in the search now going on for the two robbers.
No trace of them could be found in Flagstaff, so the lawman took the next train back to Winslow on the afternoon of April 8. While on the trip back, they learned that two men had been seen hiding in the brush near the right-of-way to Canyon Diablo. Stopping the train a couple of miles past Canyon Diablo, Houck and Pemberton went back toward the town on foot. The sun was just setting over the distant San Francisco Peaks when they reached Canyon Diablo.There they met Fred Volz, former railroad telegrapher turned Indian trader to the Navajos and Hopis. Volz told Houck and Pemberton that he had noticed two suspicious-looking characters hanging around the trading post all day. At that moment, Houck and Pemberton spotted the two men and approached them after they rounded a building. as they came within six to eight feet of one another, the two lawmen asked to search them. One of the outlaws responded, "No one searches us!"
Immediately, all four men jerked their six-guns and began to firing in rapid succession.
To eyewitnesses, the shooting was so rapid that it sounded like one huge explosion. It was over in about three seconds, leaving one dead and one wounded. The dead man was John Shaw, and the wounded man was William Smythe, later identified as ex-convict William Evans.
Twenty-one shots were fired in this extremely short time span.
After Shaw was searched, his body was placed in a pine box donated by Fred Volz, and he was buried in a shallow grave (because of the extremely rocky soil) in the Canyon Diablo cemetery.
The same night following the shootout, some cowboys from Hashknife outfit were getting drunk in the Wig Wam Saloon and talking about how Shaw had not finished the whiskey he paid for the previous night. Intent on correcting this "injustice," they decided to go to Canyon Diablo, dig him up, and pour him the last drink of whiskey they figured was rightly his.
So 15 drunken cowboys, each with a bottle of whiskey, hitched a ride on the Santa Fe back to Canyon Diablo. Arriving there around dawn, they woke up Fred Volz, who gave them some shovels and a Kodak camera. While digging up Shaw and hauling him out of his coffin to pour his last drink, the cowboys noticed a slight smile on his face. This was enough to wipe the smiles from their faces and dissipate their own hilarity. The countenance of John Shaw brought tears to many of the onlookers eyes.
Affected the most was the Hashknife cowboys, many of whom were on the run from the law in Texas and using assumed names. They probably saw their own wild past reflected in the blank eyes staring from the coffin.Rigor mortis had already set in, so they propped Shaw up on a nearby fence, poured a plentiful gulp of whiskey between his clenched teeth, and took photographs while they did so.
As Shaw was replanted with the half-empty bottle of whiskey, the cowboys stood around with their hats off. This macabre event evidently sobered the cowboys, who, realizing what they had done, went home subdued.
Today, nothing much is left of canyon Diablo but fragments of buildings and heaps of silent stones to mark what was once a town named after and owned by the devil.
Harry McNeer
The late John Shaw being prepared to receive " a plentiful gulp of whiskey" from the Hashknife cowboys. Images courtesy A.H.S.
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