The Bisbee Raid: Five Minutes of Gunfire and Death

Bisbee, Arizona Territory — December 8, 1883

Shortly after seven o’clock on Saturday evening, December 8, 1883, a heavily armed band rode into Bisbee.

The mining town was still young, built around the growing copper operations in the Mule Mountains. What happened that evening would become one of the bloodiest crimes in the history of Arizona Territory.

Contemporary newspaper reports initially struggled even to determine how many people had been killed. But on the basic sequence of events, the early accounts were remarkably clear.

The gunmen had come to rob the store of A. A. Castaneda.

Six Men Ride into Bisbee

A contemporary account, attributed to a Tombstone newspaper, reported that the party was “well mounted and heavily armed.”

There were apparently six men.

When the riders came within roughly one hundred yards of Castaneda’s store, they dismounted. One man remained behind in charge of the horses while the other five walked toward the business.

At the store, the five divided again.

Three entered. Two remained outside.

For the moment, Bisbee remained quiet.

Then the rifles began firing.

The first shots were scattered. Within moments, according to the newspaper account, they developed into a “regular fusillade.”

Residents hurried toward the sound. What they initially encountered was confusion: armed men, rifle fire and townspeople falling near Castaneda’s store.

The shooting was indiscriminate enough that the contemporary account described the victims as having been attacked in a “spirit of pure demoniacal and fiendish murder.”

Tappeiner and Smith

Among those killed immediately was J. C. Tappeiner, identified in the newspaper as an assayer at the Copper Queen mine.

Tappeiner was shot in the head.

The report placed him at the Bon Ton Saloon, stating that when he fell, his head came to rest inside the establishment.

Nearby was D. T. Smith, described in the same account as a well-known rancher from the San Pedro who also had business interests in Bisbee.

Smith was also shot in the head and killed instantly.

The early newspaper report said he fell only a short distance from Tappeiner.

There is no need to reconstruct why either man was where he was or whether the gunmen deliberately selected them as targets. The contemporary account establishes only that both were in the immediate vicinity of Castaneda’s store when the shooting erupted.

Mrs. Roberts Comes to the Door

Another victim was Mrs. Roberts, identified by the newspaper as the keeper of a boarding house.

Hearing the rifle fire, she came to the door of her house and looked in the direction of the shooting.

A bullet struck her in the spine.

The early report described the wound as one that would “undoubtedly cause death.”

Mrs. Roberts was pregnant. Contemporary accounts would include her unborn child among the victims of the Bisbee bloodshed.

“Tex” Nolly

J. A. Nolly, known locally by the nickname “Tex,” was also caught in the gunfire.

The newspaper identified Nolly as being engaged in the lumber business in Bisbee.

He was shot in the breast.

The earliest reports described his wound as one from which he could not recover. A subsequent version of the account reported that Nolly had died from the wound.

The newspaper also reported that two additional people had been wounded, although the account did not identify them.

The reports reaching readers in the first days after the raid were still developing. Names, casualty totals and details changed as information arrived from Bisbee.

What did not change was the extraordinary speed and violence of the attack.

Five Minutes of Hell

While rifle fire continued outside, Castaneda’s store was robbed.

The contemporary account placed the amount taken at about $3,000.

There is no indication in this early report that the robbers were disappointed by a missing Copper Queen payroll or that the robbery turned violent because expected money had failed to arrive. Those details appear in later versions of the story but are not established by the contemporary account used here.

According to the newspaper, the entire transaction—the robbery and shooting—lasted approximately five minutes.

Then it was over.

The gunmen returned to their horses, mounted and rode away before the people of Bisbee had fully realized what had just happened.

In only minutes, men who had ridden into town to commit robbery had left dead and mortally wounded residents behind them.

Into the Night

The robbers fled in the direction of Soldier Holes.

Bisbee was left to count its casualties while word of the attack began spreading beyond the mining camp.

The first reports were imperfect. Some victims were already dead. Others were not expected to survive. Even the number of men involved required clarification.

But there was no uncertainty about what had happened in Bisbee.

An armed band had ridden into town, robbed Castaneda’s store, opened fire in its vicinity and disappeared into the darkness.

The raid had taken only minutes.

Finding the men responsible would take considerably longer.

Two posses, headed by Deputy Sheriffs Hatch and Bryant, took up the pursuit.

The hunt for the Bisbee killers had begun.

Source Note

This account is built primarily from contemporary newspaper reporting published immediately after the December 8, 1883 Bisbee raid, including a Tombstone account subsequently reprinted by other Arizona newspapers. Where the early reports conflict with later retellings, details not supported by the contemporary account have been omitted.