Tascosa: Its Life and Gaudy Times

by Frederick Nolan

“Gatlin was one of the breed then prevalent on the West Texas plains who would kill a man to check whether the gun was loaded.”Here, for the first time, is the true, detailed, down-and-dirty story of Tascosa: here at last are the facts that connect the stories of the “beef bonanza,” Pat Garrett’s “Home Rangers,” the 1883 Cowboy Strike and the relentless, undeclared war that ensued between the corporation ranchers—Charlie Goodnight, “Alphabet” Lee, Al Boyce of the XIT and the rest of them—and the tough, dangerous fraternity of rustlers manipulated by Tascosa town boss Jesse Jenkins, a thirty year conflict that precipitated as gory a procession of violence and death as any frontier town ever witnessed. As well as being the center of ranching activity in the Panhandle, Tascosa also became the last best hiding place in Texas for killers on the run, horse thieves, tinhorn gamblers, hair-trigger shootists or anyone else with a past he wanted to get away from. Billy the Kid, “Poker Tom” Emory, Bill Gatlin, Jim Kenedy, and Louis “The Animal” Bousman were just a few of the outlaws and desperadoes who vied for dominance with Cape Willingham, Cap Arrington, Jim East, and other lawmen in an ongoing war of attrition that made sudden death a routine occurrence on the town’s dusty street. A lot of bad men made fortunes and a lot of good men lost them as Tascosa went from boom to bust, from frontier Babylon to forgotten ghost town, in just a few short gaudy decades. Bypassed by the railroad, its body fenced in and its heart torn out, the community dried up and blew away. Today, Tascosa is a ghost town; its name all but disappeared from maps of Texas. Gone, but not forgotten: in Tascosa Frederick Nolan has dug up the rip-roaring history of one of the most violent outlaw towns of the Old West.

384 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2007

About the author

Frederick William Nolan is an English editor and writer, mostly known as Frederick Nolan, but also using the pen names Donald Severn, Daniel Rockfern, Christine McGuire and Frederick H. Christian.

He was educated in Liverpool and Aberaeron, Wales. At the age of twenty one, he began the researches that established him as one of England's leading authorities on the American West. In 1954 he was co-founder of The English Westerners' Society.

Reviews

[Ml Stephens · Rating 4 out of 5]

wow. most of you don't know much about this chapter of Texas history -- worth a look well told

[Judith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading Tascosa: It's Life and Gaudy Times, by Frederick Nolan, was "spurred" by my genealogy search. It is a well-researched, though narrow endeavor, for anyone interested in the wild old west of New Mexico and Texas. A history of a town that almost made it, it gives you a good feel for the character of the era. Two critiques (one personal)- Mr. Nolan sure doesn't like my old 2nd cousin 3x removed, Louis (The Animal) Bousman. I'm sure he was an ornery old cuss ("son-of-a-bitch," as Louis would say), but he was also a very good (and funny) storyteller, had a unique history even for the west, in that he married a native (Choctaw) woman and lived on reservations a good part of his life. The fact that he was illiterate was not uncommon. In fact, a similar history existed for Kit Carson. Perhaps a few of Nolan's "good old boy" sources harbored some prejudice in that regard, I don't know. Certainly Mr. Nolan's brief descriptions of Louis' family are scandalous, misogynist, and racist. Several times he alludes to the notion that Louis was lying, as, for instance, when Louis says both his wife's children by her first marriage were dead. In fact, when Louis was interviewed for this statement, 1934, Sarah's children were indeed dead, having passed in 1922 and 1925. Secondly, there is sparse treatment of native cultures in this book, a glaring absence of a vital historical perspective which created the passing anomaly that was Tascosa.