Old West Timeline

1862

• Gold is discovered in Montana near the present day town of Dillon.

• Congress passes the Homestead Act.

• Civil War action is seen in Arkansas, Texas, and New Mexico.

• Little Crow's uprising in New Mexico.

• The Battle at Picacho Pass in Arizona, the western most battle of the Civil War, takes place on April 15.

• Apache Chief Cochise attacks U.S. soldiers, igniting a war that last the next ten years.

1863

• Arizona is organized as a territory

• Idaho is organized as a territory.

• The Bozeman Trail opens from central Wyoming to Virginia City, Montana.

• Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkins, Leland Stanford, and Collis Huntington invest in the proposed Central Pacific Railroad, and investment that will make them California's Big Four.

• Quantrill leads a raid on Lawrence, Kansas.

• More than 250 Shoshone Indians are killed by the U.S. Army near Logan, Utah in the Bear River Massacre.

1864

• Montana is organized as a territory

• Nevada is admitted to the Union.

• Colorado cavalry volunteers slay 133 Cheyennes and Arapahos at Sand Creek

• Kit Carson accepts the surrender of 8,000 Navajos

1865

• Lee surrenders at Apomattox, effectively ending the Civil War.

• The Union Pacific begins building a transcontinental railroad at Omaha, Nebraska.

• The last land engagement of the Civil War is fought in May, at the Battle of Palmito Ranch in South Texas, more than a month after General Lee's surrender at Appomatox, Virginia.

1866

• Indians massacre William J. Fetterman and eighty troops near Fort Kearney, Wyoming.

• Jesse and Frank James launch their criminal career with a bank robbery in Liberty, Missouri

• First cattle trail blazed by Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving, 2000 head of cattle moved from Texas to New Mexico.

• Jesse Chisholm, a trader, cut the Chisholm Trail by carting a heavy load of buffalo hides from Oklahoma to Kansas.

• Cholera epidemic strikes many American cities

1867

• Nebraska is admitted to the Union.

• The first cattle drive from Texas up the Chisholm Trail arrives at the rail yards of Abilene, Kansas.

• The United States purchases Alaska from Russia for 2 cents per acre.

• The Wagon Box Fight between the Sioux and the U.S. Army occurs on August 2, 1867 near Fort Phil Kearny, Wyoming .

• The Hayfield Fight occurs on August 1, 1867 three miles from Fort C.F. Smith, Montana. Pitting a determined stand of 31 soldiers and civilians against more than 700 Sioux and Cheyenne warriors, the combined soldier/civilian force withstood six hours of attacks before relief finally arrived to disperse the warriors.

• The Treaty of Medicine Lodge creates reservations in western Oklahoma for the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa and Comanche Indians.

1868

• The Sioux sign a treaty with the United States at Fort Laramie, Wyoming.

• Kiowa moved to Oklahoma reservation.

• The Crow Indians are moved to a Montana reservation

• The Battle of the Washita occurs in Western Oklahoma on November 27, 1868. Lt. Col. George A. Custer, leading the 7th Cavalry, attacked the sleeping Southern Cheyenne village of Chief Black Kettle. The chief and more than 100 Indians, many of them women and children, were killed.  Hailed at the time as a military victory, it is today viewed as a massacre.

• The Navajo Indian Reservation, the largest reservation in the country, is established in northeast Arizona, overlapping the four corners into Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico.

1869

• The Central Pacific and Union Pacific join at Promontory Point, Utah, creating the first transcontinental railroad.

• Utah and Wyoming are organized as territories

• Wyoming is the first state to give women the right to vote.

• Wild Bill Hickok is Marshall in Hays City, Kansas.

• Jesse James robs first bank.

• John Wesley Powell makes his first expedition on the Green and Colorado Rivers.

• The Osage Indians are moved to a reservation in northeast Oklahoma.
• Ghost Dance movement appears among the Paiute on reservations in Nevada. Participants believed in the imminent return of the dead and the buffalo, the disappearance of the white man, and the return of the land to the natives. This led to the Paiute Massacre of 1870, in which over half of the tribe were killed by settlers paranoid of the results.
• Major General George Crook -- arguably the Army's best Indian fighter and one of the few government officials who treated all natives with respectful understanding -- drives most of the Arizona Apache onto reservations. Warfare with the Apache persists to this day, however, lead by the Chief Geronimo.

• On September 6 Louisa Ann Swain, a seventy-year-old woman, becomes the first woman in America to vote in a public election at Laramie, Wyoming.

1871

• More than 100 Apaches are killed in the Camp Grant Massacre in Arizona.

• Wild Bill Hickok is Marshal in Abilene, Kansas.

1872

• On January 18, "Buffalo Bill" Cody, General Sheridan, General Custer, Chief Spotted Tail, Chief Two Lance and the Grand Duke Alexis go on a buffalo hunt near North Platte, Nebraska.

• Apache Chief Cochise surrenders to General O.O. Howard and is sent to a reservation.

• Yellowstone becomes the first U.S. national park

• Dodge City, Kansas established as a center of the buffalo trade. After 1876, Texas cattle and cowboys were the town's economic mainstay. 

• The first formal rodeo is held in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

• Buffalo Bill Cody awarded Congressional Medal of Honor. Later that year, he appears on stage for the first time portraying himself in "Scouts of the Prairie".

• The Sioux War begins, which disperses the Sioux and Northern Cheyenne. General Custer is continually outwitted by the native leaders Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, but it is a draining effort on their tribes. Native attacks become less and less frequent as Sitting Bull and others retreat into Canada.

• The Modoc War rages in southern Oregon and northern California. The conflict, also known as the Lava Beds War, was the last of the Indian Wars to occur in these two states.

• The Big Bonanza, the Comstock's richest ore body, is discovered in Nevada.

• Ellsworth succeeds Abilene as the northern stopping point on the Old Texas cattle trail.

1873

• The railroad arrives in South Dakota.

• Cable cars are introduced in San Francisco, California.

• Although federal authorities estimate that hunters are killing buffalo at a rate of three million per year, President Grant vetoes a law protecting the herd from extermination.

• Modoc Indian War ends in California

• The double action revolver is developed

• The James Gang pulls its first train robbery at Adair, Iowa.

1874

• On June 27 while occupying an old trading post, 28 hunters including a 21-year-old Bat Masterson are besieged and eventually drive off 700 Commanche warriors at the Second Battle of Adobe Walls.

• Gold is discovered in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

• Joseph Glidden receives a patent for barbed wire, an inexpensive, durable and effective fencing material which, with the destruction of the buffalo, will open the plains to more efficient agriculture and ranching.
• Fort Sill is established in southwestern Oklahoma as a base of operations of the Indian Wars.

• On January 26, a posse, representing the Pinkerton Detective Agency, bombed the home belonging to Jesse James’ mother in Clay County, Missouri. The bomb blew Zerelda’s hand off and killed Jesse's nine-year-old half-brother Archie Peyton Samuel. "Hanging Judge" Isaac Parker arrives in Fort Smith, Arkansas he shortly begins his 21 year stint as Judge, he handed out 88 death sentences, 79 swung.
• Wyatt Earp begins his career as a law officer in Wichita, Kansas.
• Deadwood, South Dakota soon to be one of the wildest towns in the West, springs into existence when Black Hills miners find gold on Deadwood Creek.
• The U.S. Government orders all Indians in the Black Hills and Wyoming to report to reservations or face military action.
• Prospectors find lead carbonate ores, rich in silver, near present-day Leadville, Colorado.

1876

• Bat Masterson became a deputy marshal of Dodge City, Kansas, serving along side his brother Jim.

• On January 10, "Texas Joe" Horner, Tom Wagman and Bill Redding hold up the Martin and Company Bank in Comanche, Texas. As they fled the bank, one of them shouted: “Charge this to the James boys!”

• The Battle of the Powder River occurred on March 17, 1876 in southeastern Montana. This battle between Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds' troops and the combined forces of the Cheyenne and Oglala Sioux was a loss for the U.S. Army and contributed to the defeats of General Crook at the Rosebud and Custer at Little Bighorn because it caused the Indians to form a massive nation for self- preservation.

• The Battle of the Rosebud occurred on June 17, 1876 between the U.S. Army and the Lakota and Cheyenne Indians in Montana Territory. After six hours and much lead shot, the Indians called off the fight when the braves had fought Crook's men to a standstill.

• On June 25, Custer and his troops are slain at the Little Bighorn.

• Colorado is admitted to the Union.

• Wild Bill Hickok is murdered in Deadwood, South Dakota holding Aces and Eights, the dead man’s hand, in a game of poker

• On September 7 a bloody battle ensues in Northfield, Minnesota when the James Younger gang tries to rob the First National Bank, 2 members died, Cole Younger was shot 11 times but managed to survive. Frank and Jesse James and four others escaped.

• On September 30, twenty-three-year-old David ‘Davy’ Crockett, related to the famous Crockett of the Alamo, bud a "bad guy" rather than a "good guy" is gunned down by Sheriff Rinehart and two others in the streets of Cimarron, New Mexico. 

1877

• The United States violates its treaty with Dakota Sioux by seizing the Black Hills.

• Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce surrenders after the Bear Paw battle in Montana.

• Crazy Horse is captured, then assassinated while in custody at Fort Robinson, Nebraska.

• John Wesley Hardin, a Texas gunfighter who claims to have killed more than 40 men, is sentenced to 25 years in the Texas State Prison for the murder of a deputy sheriff. "I take no sass but sasparilla," he once said, explaining his deadly disposition.

• The Battle of the Big Hole occurs in Montana.

• Bat Masterson is Sheriff of Dodge City, Kansas.

• On August 19, 1884 John H. ‘Doc’ Holliday shot bartender Billy Allen in the arm over $5 at Leadville, Colorado.

1878

• On January 27, Dave Rudabaugh, Mike Roarke, Dan Dement and three other masked men attempt to rob the Santa Fe train station near Kinsley, Kansas. One man is killed.

• Billy the Kid makes a name for himself as a killer in the Lincoln County War in New Mexico.

• In March John Younger, a member of the Younger Gang, is killed by Pinkerton detectives in St. Clair County, Missouri.

• With racial discrimination on the rise in the post-Reconstruction South, an estimated 40,000 African Americans begin to migrate from the former slave states into Kansas. These so-called Exodusters establish the first all black pioneer town at Nicodemus, Kansas.

• The Bannock Indian War takes place in Oregon .

• On November 27, homesteaders Ami Ketchum and Luther Mitchell shoot and kill cattleman Bob Olive in Nebraska. Olive's brother leads a vigilante group that hangs Mitchell and Ketchum and burns their bodies. Thereafter, Nebraska becomes known as the "Man Burner State."

• Wyatt Earp is deputy US Marshall for the Arizona Territory
• Dull Knife escapes from Fort Robinson, Nebraska.
• The Meeker Massacre occurs at the White River Ute Reservation in Colorado.

• On September 26, 1879 the town of Deadwood, Dakota Territory burns to the ground. Sawmill owner John Hunter supplies enough lumber to rebuild nearly all of Main and Sherman Streets.

1880

• The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad reaches Santa Fe, marking the death of the Santa Fe Trail.

• Apache leader Victorio is slain in Mexico

• Hide hunters have shot the buffalo to near extinction.

1881

• Legendary outlaw Billy the Kid, charged with more than 21 murders in a brief lifetime of crime, is finally brought to justice by Sheriff Pat Garrett, who trails The Kid for more than six months before killing him with a single shot at Fort Sumner, New Mexico.

• Tombstone, Arizona, Deputy Marshal Wyatt Earp and his brothers gun down the Clantons in a showdown at the O.K. Corral.

• Sitting Bull surrenders.

• Helen Hunt Jackson publishes A Century of Dishonor, the first detailed examination of the federal government’s treatment of Native Americans in the West. Her findings shock the nation with proof that empty promises, broken treaties and brutality helped pave the way for white pioneers.

• Late summer brings the last big cattle drive to Dodge City, Kansas. With livestock plentiful on the plains, the long trek up the Western Trail is no longer profitable, and most states now prohibit driving out-of-state cattle across their borders. In the fifteen years since Texas cowboys first hit the trail, as many as two million longhorns have been driven to market in Dodge City, Kansas.

1882

• Jesse James is killed by Bob Ford in St. Joseph, Missouri.

• Stagecoach bandit Black Bart is captured in California.

• Adolph Bandelier begins his exploration of the Anasazi ruins in New Mexico.

• Judge Roy Bean opens the Jersey Lily saloon in Langtry, Texas

• Free Chinese immigration ends.

• Annie Oakley makes her first public appearance at a sharp shooting show. 

• The last great Indian buffalo hunt occurs in North Dakota .

Continued Next Page

<<Previous  1 2 3 4  Next >>

From the Rocky Mountain General Store

Old West Books - Legends of America and the Rocky Mountain General Store has collected a number of Old West books for our frontier enthusiasts.  For many of these, we have only one available.  To see this varied collection, click HERE!