Sam Bass

American highwayman

• Born: July 21, 1851
• Birthplace: Mitchell, Indiana
• Died: July 21, 1878
• Place of death: Round Rock, Texas

Cause of notoriety: Bass was a frontier-era outlaw who robbed a Union Pacific train at Big Springs, Nebraska, and various stagecoaches.

Active: 1877-1878

Locale: Nebraska, Texas, and Dakota Territory

Early Life

Samuel Bass (bas) was born the sixth of ten children to Daniel and Elizabeth (Sheeks) Bass on a farm near Mitchell, Indiana, on July 21, 1851. Tragically, Bass was orphaned before his thirteenth birthday and went to live with an uncle. Not much is known about Bass’s early life, but periodic disagreements with his uncle probably enticed him to leave Indiana in 1869. At the age of eighteen, Bass left home, and after brief layovers in Missouri and Mississippi, he found his way to Denton, Texas. For several years, the young man worked as a freighter, laborer, and liveryman. After acquiring a fleet-footed horse in 1874, Bass focused all his energy on horse racing. His horse won race after race, and the animal gained legendary notoriety in North Texas as the Denton Mare. By 1876, Bass apparently became acquainted with a small-time thief named Joel Collins. At the same time, the goldfields in the Black Hills offered riches for those who could provide food, supplies, and materials to the mining communities. Bass and Collins headed north to Deadwood, Dakota Territory, with a herd of Texas longhorns. The pair reportedly cleared more than eight thousand dollars in the Black Hills mining camps but soon squandered their earnings on gambling and failed freighting and saloon operations. Down on the their luck and low on finances, the pair eventually turned to the dangerous but lucrative field of highway robbery.

Outlaw Career

Bass’s outlaw career began in earnest in 1877, when he and Collins recruited a handful of men to rob stagecoaches in and around the Black Hills mining towns. The gang reportedly robbed seven stagecoaches but eventually came down the Sidney-Deadwood Trail to Nebraska. After losing money in the gaming houses of Sidney and Ogallala, Nebraska, the gang turned to train robbery. On the evening of September 18, 1877, Bass and five accomplices held up a Union Pacific passenger train near Big Springs, Nebraska, a small whistle-stop on the transcontinental line close to the Nebraska-Colorado border. The bandits made off with more than sixty thousand dollars but were quickly pursued by posses—including the United States Army—hoping to collect the sizable reward offered by the Union Pacific Railroad.

Within two weeks, pursuing posses killed Collins and several other accomplices. With the law hot on his trail, Bass returned to Texas, where he resumed his occupation as a stagecoach and train robber. After forming another gang, Bass and his fellow highwaymen held up stagecoaches and trains around the vicinity of Dallas. Bass’s criminal exploits sparked one of the largest manhunts in Texas history, a chase that was followed enthusiastically by the Texas press. With each escape, the elusive Bass gained more notoriety. After eluding escape for more than four months, Bass was finally betrayed by Jim Murphy, a fellow gang member who turned informant. With information provided by Murphy, the Texas Rangers and local posses surprised the Bass gang in Round Rock, Texas, on July 19 as they prepared to rob a bank. In the ensuing gunfight, Bass was mortally wounded. He succumbed to his wounds on July 21, 1878, his twenty-seventh birthday.

Impact

Sam Bass had a short and relatively unsuccessful criminal career. Other than his impressive haul during the Big Springs train robbery, Bass’s earnings as a highwayman were insignificant. His outlaw career lasted barely more than a year, and it ended in a blazing gunfight with the Texas Rangers. Still, Bass’s name and fame—particularly in Texas—reached legendary status. Shortly after his death, Bass, like Jesse James in Missouri, became immortalized as a Robin Hood-type figure who was forced into a life of crime because of the graft and malfeasance of those in power. Popular histories, songs, and Hollywood films have helped keep Bass’s name and exploits alive. Less than a month after his death, for example, two books appeared that began building the Sam Bass myth, as did a song titled “The Ballad of Sam Bass,” a tune sung by school-age children for more than a century. In 1949, the film Calamity Jane and Sam Bass portrayed Bass as a good-hearted cowboy who, through deceit, was forced into a life of crime in order to restore his good name. The Bass myth existed into the twenty-first century: Rumors of Bass gold, stashed in an undetected cave for more than one hundred years, abounded in north Texas and kept fortune seekers interested in sites where Bass was said to have visited. When entering Round Rock, Texas, from the north on Interstate 35, travelers see an exit sign pointing to “Sam Bass Road,” a monument to a fallen cultural hero.

Bibliography

Gard, Wayne. Sam Bass. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1936. Written by a noted historian of the frontier American West, this book stood as the premier biography of Sam Bass for more than sixty years.

Hogg, Thomas E. Authentic History of Sam Bass and His Gang. 1878. Reprint. Bandera, Tex.: Frontier Times, 1926. The first biography of Sam Bass. Written and published within weeks of his death, this book began to mold Bass into a mythic Robin Hood figure.

Miller, Rick. Sam Bass and Gang. Austin, Tex.: State House Press, 1999. The definitive biography of Sam Bass. A thoroughly researched book that leaves few questions unanswered.

O’Neal, Bill. Encyclopedia of Western Gunfighters. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1979. This valuable collection of 587 gunfighter biographies provides a biography of Bass along with short descriptions of his criminal exploits and three gunfights.