Ellen Watson was better known as Cattle Kate.

This image available for photographic prints and downloads HERE!

Ellen Watson, dubbed by Wyoming newspapers in the late 1880’s, as “Cattle Kate,” was long thought of as an outlaw. Watson, and her boyfriend (or husband,) Jim Averell were hanged by vigilantes near the Sweetwater River in Wyoming on July 20, 1889, for the accused crime of cattle rustling.  However, since their deaths, historians have theorized that their murders were unjustified, perpetrated by powerful land and cattle barons of the time. This was just one of the many actions taken by the Wyoming Stock Growers Association who controlled the cattle industry in Wyoming and was trying to run off the small cattle owners.

Though the six men who hanged the pair were charged with murder, key witnesses began to mysteriously die or disappear and all of them were acquitted. Both Averell and "Cattle Kate" were "tried" in the press, which was owned or influenced by the cattle barons, and branded as "outlaws."

Return to Outlaws

Return to the Old West

Return to Vintage Photographs