History, true, accurate history, is often tossed aside in favor of sensationalism, hyperbole, and market hype. In our little corner of paradise, the mythology of the “Old West” hits us from every side.
In Fremont County and throughout Wyoming in the late territorial period and into the early days of statehood, no name held more gravitas than that of Robert LeRoy Parker. If you don’t recognize the name, you’ll surely recognize his alias, “Butch Cassidy.”
Bill Betenson, a mechanical engineer by education but a history buff by choice, has spent his life researching and dispelling myths surrounding the colorful outlaw. Betenson should; it is his heritage.
Betenson is the great-grandson of Lula Parker Betenson, a younger sister of Robert LeRoy. As the great-grandnephew of the famous outlaw, Betenson has written four books on the subject and is a renowned speaker on not just the exploits of Butch Cassidy, Kid Curry and the Sundance Kid, but Western History as a whole.
There are a lot of holes in Western History, holes that are far too often filled with conjecture, nonsense, or outright fiction.
One of the major points of contention in the saga of Butch and Sundance, is how they died. If you watched the George Roy Hill western, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” starring Robert Redford and Paul Newman, the Hollywood effect comes into play immediately.
“Since Newman was an established, well-known actor and was playing Butch Cassidy, Hill named him first,” Betenson said. “Robert Redford was not well known. This picture made his career.”
So, what’s in a name? Was the film accurate? Not hardly, but not as glaringly ridiculous as 2001’s “Pearl Harbor.” On the Hollywood scale, Redford and Newman approach historical fiction status.
At 86, Lula Betenson was hired as a consultant on the 1970 film by Hill and met with Newman and Redford often on the set. She approved of much of the production but didn’t like the overall image of Robert LeRoy presented elsewhere. She remembered him as a kind, hard-working older brother. Many of his friends in later life shared that sentiment, just not the Pinkerton Agency, the Union Pacific Railroad and a handful of banks.
There are well recorded events involving Robert LeRoy Parker and Harry Longabaugh (Butch and Sundance.) They did complete the largest series of bank and train robberies in the history of the American West.
Longabaugh spent a lot of time in Sundance, Wyoming, hence the nickname, and Parker was a friendly familiar face in Fremont County.
In the early days of statehood, Fremont County was much larger than it is today.
When the county was created on March 5, 1884, it was carved out of the massive Sweetwater County, with distant Green River as its county seat.
Pinedale, on the far side of the Wind River Range over South Pass, and Thermopolis on the opposite side of the Owl Creek Mountains, were originally part of Fremont County. Thermopolis, accessible only by Birdseye, Mexican, and Blondie Passes, was even more isolated from the county seat in distant Lander until the Chicago, Quincy, and Burlington Railroad carved a route through the Wind River Canyon in 1914, and a highway was completed 10 years later.
Robert LeRoy Parker was born in Utah to Maxmillian Parker and Ann “Annie” Gillies. The couple married in 1865, barely a year later, their eldest son, Robert LeRoy, was born.
Robert LeRoy Parker was the oldest of 13 children born to Maximillian and Annie. He was born in Beaver, Utah, on April 13, 1866.
Robert LeRoy worked for his parents and for area ranches and farmers as a teenager. One day, he tore his only pair of work pants and rode into nearby Circleville to buy a pair of overalls from the dry goods store.
The store was closed, but that didn’t matter to Robert LeRoy. He broke in, took a pair of overalls, and left an IOU explaining what he had done. The note said that he would pay later. The store owner had him arrested.
The local judge let him off, but Parker was on his way to becoming the most notorious outlaw in Wyoming.
As a teenager, Parker set out on his own, working on ranches across Northern Utah. At one ranch, he met Mike Cassidy, a known cattle rustler and horse thief.
At 18, Parker began calling himself Roy Cassidy and continued working on ranches in Utah, Colorado, and Southern Wyoming. It’s during this five-year period from 1884 to 1889 that many authors claim he worked as a butcher in Rock Springs. His great-grandnephew doesn’t agree, and the timeline of the ranches he is said to have worked at bears that out.
Historical research places Robert LeRoy Parker, “Roy Cassidy,” in Wyoming and Montana Territory from 1884 to 1887. In 1887, he moved to Telluride, Colorado. Evidence suggests that he was selling horses rustled from ranches in Wyoming to buyers near Telluride.
That first summer in Telluride, he met Matt Warner. Warner raised racehorses, and he and “Roy” hit it off. They worked the racing circuit in Colorado and Utah Territory, earning a decent living.
The first established point in the tale of “Butch Cassidy” came on June 24, 1889, when he Warner, and the McCarty Brothers robbed their first bank. They made off with $2,000 from the San Miguel Valley Bank in the mining boomtown of Telluride, the equivalent of $70,000 today.
He was just 23 years old and was on the run, with a posse in hot pursuit. He rode north into Wyoming Territory, following the Rawlins to Ft. Brown stage route into Fremont County before finding refuge in the “High Country.”
He spent that first winter in a cabin on the Rocking Chair Ranch, owned by Jack Wiggins, just a few miles east of Dubois. That following year, he purchased a small ranch, allegedly paying for it with gold coins and currency from the San Miguel Valley Bank.
That spring, flush with cash, Cassidy rode into the southern Big Horn Basin for the first time. He was quickly noticed in the poverty-stricken area of then Fremont County.
Roy Cassidy quickly exhausted his cash. He left the Thermopolis area, riding west along the ridge of the Owl Creek Mountains to Blondie Pass, an area he would know well over the ensuing years. He crossed down into the Wind River Valley, rode over South Pass, and ended up in the booming railroad and mining town of Rock Springs.
It was in Rock Springs, or soon after his departure that “Butch Cassidy” became his alias. Many books and historical articles claim that the name “Butch” came from his time working as a butcher in Rock Springs. Betenson doesn’t agree.
“There just wasn’t enough time for him to learn how to be a meat cutter in between all the robberies,” Betenson said. “The name came from somewhere else.”
Allegedly, Cassidy took a job at a downtown butcher shop in Rock Springs. He was supposedly referred to by patrons as Butcher Cassidy. The name eventually shortened to Butch Cassidy, and a legend was born.
Cassidy returned to the Thermopolis area, living on the Quien Sabe ranch, just 15 miles southeast of Thermopolis on the other side of the Owl Creek Mountains.
Cassidy was considered a model neighbor, helpful friend, and an all-around good guy by his neighbors. His fellow travelers didn’t always share that same good reputation.
In addition to Warner, Cassidy took up with Jacob Snyder, Elzy Lay, and Billy Nutcher. They began calling themselves the Big Horn Basin Gang. They had a lot of honest and not-so-honest adventures from 1890 to 1894.
A popular hangout was the now-defunct town of Embar, near Torrey Lake, just a few miles east of Dubois and on the opposite side of the Owl Creek Mountains from Thermopolis.
Legend has it that Cassidy once roped a cougar and tied it to a hitching post outside the bar in Embar.
Cassidy often made the 50+ mile trek over Blondie Pass to Dubois or Lander, returning on the same route. The road remains open today, but much of it is nearly impassable and crosses the Wind River Reservation.
Butch Cassidy My Uncle by Bill Betenson
One of Cassidy’s favorite haunts was the tiny town of Mail Camp. Mail Camp is no more, but it once had a bar, a restaurant, a post office, and a boarding house.
The Big Horn Basin was an area of hard-working farmers and equally hard-drinking ruffians.
A frequent visitor to Lander, Cassidy, began taking a new route from the Quien Sabe. He rode the Owl Creeks to Embar, crossed the reservation along the Wind River, then dropped across the Wind River Valley through Napoleon Bonaparte Kinnear’s ranch, then on to the seat of Fremont County.
Cassidy kept hanging out with his friends in the Big Horn Basin Gang. After a short respite as a legitimate rancher, his larcenous friend Billy Nutcher brought Cassidy back to the life of crime.
Nutcher “found” some horses he claimed to have lost in Johnson County back in 1890 and sold them to Cassidy. The horses were, of course, stolen.
Wyoming was a powder keg waiting to explode just after statehood in 1890, with rich ranchers centered in Cheyenne, considering smaller ranches throughout the state nothing more than thieves. The Wyoming Stockgrowers Association hired mercenary gunmen from Texas to eradicate what the rich cattlemen considered common outlaws.
Butch Cassidy the Wyoming Years – Bill Betenson –
The fracas that became known as the Johnson County War quickly escalated after Nate Champion and Nick Ray were killed by the Texans 75 miles east of Thermopolis near Kaycee.
The murderers raised the ire of the ranchers in the Big Horn Basin, and they quickly formed their own association to battle the invaders. Cassidy was at these association meetings, but the threat never materialized when small eastern Wyoming ranchers surrounded the Texans, and the rich cattlemen called in the Army to rescue their hired killers.
Cassidy felt the heat from his purchase of the three stolen horses and rode over the mountains to Evanston, near the corner of Utah, before moving north to spend the winter among Mormons in Star Valley, near Afton. 
The isolation on the Idaho border didn’t hide Cassidy for long.
On April 8, 1892, with a Fremont County arrest warrant, he was captured by Uinta County Sheriff Robert Calverly and his posse. Cassidy put up a good fight and was still sore and bruised when he arrived back in Lander to stand trial in Fremont County District Court.
He was released when witnesses couldn’t be located and promised to return in 1893 to stand trial. Amazingly, he did return.
Cassidy was on his best behavior, working for ranches up the Wind River until it changed to the Big Horn just south of Thermopolis. His old friend Billy Nutcher wasn’t such a model citizen. Nutcher began writing bad checks in Lander, defaulting on loans, and Cassidy was guilty by association.
Cassidy eventually went to trial, where the judge believed at least part of his story of not knowing the horses he bought were stolen, and was let off with a $25 fine.
He spent a lot of time in and out of the county courthouse. Andrew Johnson, an overzealous sheriff’s deputy, decided to round up cattle and horses owned by Cassidy and his friends, but took livestock belonging to many other ranchers by mistake.
Cassidy argued successfully that the deputy was wrong, and the judge issued a writ of replevin, allowing Cassidy and the others to sort out their livestock on their own.
Cassidy returned to the Quien Sabe but was arrested again for horse theft in 1894. This time, Judge Jesse Knight sentenced him to the Wyoming Penitentiary in Laramie. His old friend Jacob Snyder, maybe the worst of the Big Horn Basin Gang, joined him in prison.
Despite his criminal tendencies, Cassidy was an engaging man who could charm almost anyone and was always willing to help a friend.
Judge Knight reconsidered his decision and wrote to Wyoming Governor William A. Richards asking him to pardon Cassidy.
The governor complied, releasing him after 18 months in prison, with the stipulation that Cassidy promise not to rustle cattle or steal horses in Wyoming again. Cassidy agreed, and on January 20, 1896, he walked out of the Laramie prison a free man. He kept his word and never stole another animal in Wyoming.
That doesn’t mean he left the life of crime since the agreement didn’t mention railroads or banks.
In the Hill Film, Cassidy’s gang is called the “Hole in the Wall Gang.” That’s another Hollywood misnomer.
“Sam Peckinpaugh had just directed “The Wild Bunch” in 1969, the year before “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was produced,” Betenson said. “They changed the name to the Hole in the Wall Gang to avoid legal problems with Peckinpaugh.”
Hollywood copyrights changing history, imagine.
The Hole in the Wall was a popular hideout for the Wild Bunch in the badlands near Kaycee in modern Johnson County, but the boys rarely if ever called themselves that, preferring “Wild Bunch” a name they “borrowed” from another gang of nefarious horse thieves and bandits that previously worked the Big Horn Basin.
The final epic showdown in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” has Butch and Sundance in South America, battling what seems to be the entire Bolivian Army in a prolonged shootout. Some estimate that Redford, playing the Sundance Kid, fired at least 16 and possibly more shots from a pair of six-shot revolvers in the final scene without reloading. It’s something Hollywood does routinely. Charlie Waite fired 15 times from one six-shooter in the street battle in “Open Range.” Boxer Ken Norton fired at least 10 shots from a muzzle loader in “Mandingo” without reloading. It’s a gaff that Hollywood routinely ignores in favor of action-packed drama.
The problem with the final death scene of Butch and Sundance in Bolivia is that it likely never happened.
Betenson traveled to Argentina and Bolivia to research the legend and even found a couple of graves purported to contain the remains of Robert LeRoy Parker and Harry Longabaugh. The bodies were exhumed from the graves, but the wound patterns, the size of the corpses, and the details surrounding the burials didn’t even come close to matching the legend.
“I think he made it back to Wyoming,” Betenson said of his great-uncle.
It’s an intriguing thought, one brought to mind by country legends Merle Haggard and Willy Nelson in their ballad “Pancho and Lefty.”
Hollywood and reality. Both can be entertaining, but the actual events are always much better to read about and study than the fanciful creations of screenwriters, directors, and producers.
Robert LeRoy Parker once rode the hills and valleys of Fremont County. Descendants of his full-time and part-time associates still live among us. Clarence and Charles Woodard knew Butch Cassidy well and rode with him, so did David Picard. Lonnie Woodard, Clarence’s grandson, is an avid historian living in rural Riverton, and the Picard clan lives on in the Ellison and Picard families of Shoshoni and Riverton.
History is a visceral, viable thing, and only a brief span of time separates us from Pinkerton Agent Joe LeFors chasing Tom O’Day, David Picard, the Woodard brothers, and the other members of the “Wild Bunch” across the Badwater to Lost Cabin and Lysite.