ENCYCLOPEDIA OF STAGECOACH ROBBERY IN ARIZONA

Stagecoach robberies were among the most thrilling events to fill the pages of newspapers in the old west. These encounters fascinated an entertainment starved public. Stagecoaches became the main target of road agents, before railroads arrived, because they carried wealth from the mines and brought in payrolls to the miners. However, most importantly they could be halted in isolated locations, which gave the robbers a chance to flee. The familiar order to “throw down that box” echoed throughout the remote regions of Arizona’s vast wilderness.

Stagecoach robbery had been a thriving business in other states and territories since the mid-1860s, However, during that period Arizona’s roads were not well developed, Indians were depredating in all parts of the Territory, mails were irregular and carried little of value, and there was no express within the Territory until 1877. Although there was one stagecoach robbery in 1875, stagecoach robbery did not commence at epidemic levels until December 1876.

Between 1875 and 1903 one-hundred thirty-four stagecoaches were “jumped” on the highways of Arizona and more than two hundred persons engaged in the business. More than half the robberies were never solved, but eighty robbers were caught, indicted, tried, convicted and sentenced to prison terms. Two men were lynched and one man was legally hanged for murders committed during their robberies while other robbers died of various causes before they could be arrested, and one died in prison from the same disease that killed “Doc” Holliday.

The last stagecoach robbery in the Arizona Territory occurred near Yuma in 1903.

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