Black Bart robbed stagecoaches ‑ and wrote poetry: Inside the West’s oddest outlaw
Stagecoach driver John Shine reigned in his horses on July 26, 1875, as an armed man stepped out of hiding into the road between Copperopolis and Milton in California
“Throw down the box,” the stranger ordered in a deep, resonant voice, referring to the stage’s strongbox, which typically carried cash, gold and other valuables, Legends of America reported.
Calaveras County and California had seen stage robbers before, but nothing like this one.
He wore a long linen duster and a black bowler hat. A flour sack with holes cut for his eyes served as a makeshift mask. The stage robber carried a shotgun, but never used it, and his holdups were invariably polite.
As Shine dutifully handed over the strongbox, the robber called out, “If he dares to shoot, give him a solid volley, boys.” That’s when Shine spotted rifle barrels pointing from the bushes.
A frightened passenger tried to surrender her purse, but the gunman declined, saying he only wanted the Wells Fargo strongbox, Legends of America reported.
After the outlaw departed with his ill-gotten gains, Shine got down to collect the empty box and investigate the “rifle barrels” — nothing more than some carved sticks.
The gentleman robber had scored $160 in his first stage holdup. It wouldn’t be his last.
He came to be known as Black Bart, although that obviously wasn’t his real name, and he became a legend by leaving poems after his robberies, although he only did that twice.
Black Bart’s career as an outlaw ended 139 years ago with his final robbery on Nov. 3, 1883, but his legacy lives on.
Humble beginnings
Born in either England or New York in the 1820s as Charles E. Boles, the man who would one day be known as Black Bart came to California in the Gold Rush of 1849, SFGate reported.
Failing to make his fortune, he returned East to try his hand at other jobs, get married and fight in the Civil War before abandoning his family to drift back to California in the 1870s.
By then, Wells Fargo & Co. stagecoaches had become a key part of the economy, moving a “huge output” of gold around the state, History.com reported.
“Often traveling in isolated areas, the Wells Fargo wagons and stagecoaches quickly became favorite targets for bandits; over the course of about 15 years, the company lost more than $415,000 in gold to outlaw robbers,” according to the site.
It must have seemed like easy pickings.
‘Let come what will,
I’ll try it on’
After his first heist in 1875, Boles made stagecoach robberies his specialty.
Historians credit him with robbing 28 Wells Fargo & Co. stagecoaches between 1875 and 1883, ranging as far north as Oregon and as far south as Calaveras County, Blackbart.com reported.
Most of his robberies took place in Plumas and Siskiyou counties. He also pulled holdups in Nevada, Yuba, Butte, Mendocino, Shasta and Amador counties, among others.
Each robbery unfolded the same as his first in 1875, right down to the bowler hat, flour sack and shotgun.
He never fired the shotgun and never stole from passengers. Unfailingly polite, Boles sometimes bantered with the drivers.
“Sure hope you have a lot of gold in that strongbox, I’m nearly out of money,” he told one driver on a stage line from Plumas to Butte counties in 1879, according to Thehistoryjunkie.com. The stage carried no cash or gold.
Boles “never confided in anyone, never robbed a stage with an armed guard, walked on back roads and camped out,” Sfgate reported. He sometimes walked 40 to 50 miles in a day.
“Like a bad-guy John Muir, he simply out-walked his pursuers,” the publication said.
But the legend of Black Bart rests chiefly on two crimes — his fourth and fifth robberies.
In August 1877, he held up a stagecoach between Point Arena and Duncan’s Mills in California, but this time he left something behind.
It was a short poem including an uncharacteristic bit of profanity apparently directed at Wells Fargo & Co., Legends of America reported.
“I’ve labored long and hard for bread,
For honor and for riches,
But on my corns too long you’ve tread,
You fine-haired sons of bitches.”
He signed it “Black Bart – The PO8.”
It may not have been Walt Whitman or Emily Dickinson, but it was something new in the world of outlaws. Boles left a second, longer poem after an August 1878 robbery:
“Here I lay me down to sleep,
To await the coming morrow,
Perhaps success, perhaps defeat,
And everlasting sorrow.
I’ve labored long and hard for bread,
For honor and for riches,
But on my corns too long you’ve tread,
You fine-haired sons of bitches.
Let come what will, I’ll try it on,
My condition can’t be worse,
And if there’s money in that box,
‘Tis money in my purse.”
The poem, his last left at a robbery, also was signed “Black Bart – The PO8.”
The end of Black Bart
In between his exploits as Black Bart, Boles lived quietly in “pleasant furnished rooms” at Webb’s Hotel at 47 Second St. in San Francisco, Sfgate reported.
Wearing tweed suits with his impeccable white beard, diamond stick-pin and gold watch chain, Boles was taken by most as a prosperous mine owner, according to the publication.
But it all came to an end on Nov. 3, 1883, when his robbery of a Wells Fargo & Co. stagecoach at Funk Hill in Calaveras County went awry, BlackBart.com reported.
A man riding with the stage driver to go hunting caught Boles in the hand with a rifle shot. The wily outlaw escaped but left behind a blood-stained handkerchief, Blackbart. com said.
Wells Fargo & Co. detectives used the distinctive laundry mark on the handkerchief to track down and arrest Boles, Legends of America reported.
Sentenced to six years in prison, Boles served four at San Quentin before his release in 1888. Reporters asked him if he planned to resume his outlaw career.
“No, gentlemen,” Boles replied, according to Legends of America, “I’m through with crime.”
He lived in San Francisco and then Visalia for a time before vanishing, never to be seen again.
But his legend lives on in the form of an annual Black Bart Parade in Mendocino County’s Redwood Valley and various roads and landmarks bearing his name.
The outlaw also has been portrayed in movies and television shows, including “Death Valley Days,” and even a 1986 Honey Nut Cheerios commercial.