Two Robbers Stop the Fairbank–Tombstone Stage

December 27, 1902

On the night of December 27, 1902, the stage carrying express and baggage from the railroad at Fairbank toward Tombstone had gone only about a mile when two armed men stepped into the road.

The stage had left Fairbank at about 8:30 p.m. Its driver, identified in the Tombstone Epitaph only as Mr. Hackett, was ordered to stop. One robber went to the lead horses and led the team roughly a hundred yards off the road while the second man kept Hackett covered with a six-shooter.

The robbers were interested in the Wells Fargo express shipment. Hackett was ordered down from the stage, told to get into the boot, and made to throw out the express box. He was then ordered to drive on while the two men remained behind and began breaking open the box.

Hackett reached Tombstone and notified the sheriff’s office.

A posse was organized and returned toward the scene, but darkness prevented an effective search that night.

By the following morning, the trail of the two men could be followed to the top of a small hill about one hundred yards away. There the abandoned express box was found with packages scattered around it. Most of the shipment apparently remained intact.

The Epitaph initially estimated that only $30 or $40 in cash had been taken. When the recovered box and packages were brought in and checked by Agent Tarbell, however, the newspaper reported that only one item appeared to be missing: a package containing $20.

The box itself provided evidence of how the robbers had entered it. Its lid had been broken with what the newspaper described as an implement resembling a hatchet and a small boring tool. A nail on one side of the hole had caught one robber’s hand, leaving blood on both sides of the opening.

The investigation produced another clue in Fairbank. Two men matching the descriptions of the robbers had reportedly been seen there around the time the Nogales train arrived. According to the Epitaph, they had been watching the unloading of the stage.

That detail raises the possibility that the holdup was planned around the express shipment rather than being a chance encounter on the road. The robbers may have watched the Wells Fargo material arrive by train, waited for it to be transferred to the Tombstone stage, and then intercepted the stage shortly after it left Fairbank.

Their escape remained uncertain.

Officers followed their trail from the robbery site back toward Fairbank, where it disappeared. The Epitaph suggested that the men may have boarded one of the freight trains leaving Fairbank.

The newspaper gave descriptions of both suspects, but no subsequent contemporary report identifying or arresting the two men has yet been located.

For all the preparation and risk, the robbery appears to have produced very little. The two men stopped an express stage, forced open a Wells Fargo box, scattered its contents beside the road, and apparently escaped with no more than a few dollars—or perhaps a single $20 package.

Source and Research Note

Primary source: Tombstone Epitaph, Tombstone, Arizona Territory, Sunday, December 28, 1902, page 1, “The Stage Is Held Up.” The article reports the holdup as having occurred “last night,” placing the robbery on Saturday, December 27, 1902. No later contemporary report has yet been located that establishes the identities of the robbers or records their arrest. The suspects therefore remain unidentified in this account.