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Book review ~ Cowboys and Gangster: Stories of an Untamed Southwest

Cowboys and Gangsters: Stories of an Untamed Southwest has a chapter about Williams in the early 1900s.

Cowboys and Gangsters: Stories of an Untamed Southwest has a chapter about Williams in the early 1900s.

Cowboys and Gangsters: Stories of an Untamed Southwest by Samuel H. Dolan is a compilation of stories of outlaws and lawmen that shaped the history of the Southwest.

Despite being an Emmy Award-winning producer, Dolan found the time to do painstaking research about the wild frontier in the early 1900s. His top-notch storytelling is based on official records, historic newspapers and oral accounts. His goal, as he states in the book’s introduction, is to preserve the memory of the nearly forgotten generation of Western peace officers who frequently put their lives on the line, and all too often made the ultimate sacrifice.

The book covers actual incidents that occurred in the southwestern states of Arizona, New Mexico and western Texas in the 1920s and 30s. Dolan skips over the larger than life stories of Billy the Kidd and Jesse James,who left their mark in the late 1800s ,and jumps into the raucous time period that followed the Mexican Revolution in the 1920s.

Dolan said this time of social unrest began when Mexican General Francisco “Pancho” Villa led his Division del Norte north to assault the town of Columbus, New Mexico. Those living in the Southwest were on edge as rumors spread about a violent uprising by Mexican Americans and Mexican nationals living in the United States that could lead to the independent of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and California.

Villa supporters killed 16 United States citizens on a train on the Mexico North Western Railway, near Santa Isabel, Chihuahua, that damaged the fragile United States-Mexico relationship, and gave way to a rise in anti-American sentiment among the Mexicans.

That tension between Anglos and Hispanics contributed to much of the violence that took place in the Southwest during the 1910s and 1920s. Prohibition and the smuggling of alcohol and narcotics also were found to be behind the majority of deadly encounters between federal and local lawmen and outlaws in the southwest states.

Chapter three of Cowboys and Gangsters is especially interesting to those wanting a detailed account of frontier life in Williams in 1918. The chapter covers the story of Sheriff Victor H. Melick and Officer Pete Shafer. The chapter describes Williams as a “God-awful frontier town” with more than its share of saloons, gambling houses, brothels and Chinese hop joints or opium dens.

The town was diverse, with many people coming to work in ranching, logging and railroad jobs. Williams had a reputation for violence and bawdiness. The town was known for its extensive gambling and already had 1,500 residents in the early 1900s.

The book explains that during the 1890s, Williams had no local police department and fell under the jurisdiction of Coconino County deputy sheriffs and constables. In 1901, the town was incorporated and received its own town marshal.

Dolan goes on to describe an altercation between a Hispanic deputy sheriff and an African-American bartender and the tension in 1915 when Prohibition hit the town. He talks about the liquor arrests and the turnover of town marshals.

The bulk of the chapter covers the year 1919, when the town had just two peace officers, Shafer and Melick. The two kept busy with the recently released prisoner Simplicio Torres, who immediately rung up a string of assaults and burglaries. The book, pulling details from the Coconino Sun and the Williams News, goes on to describe Torres’ erratic behavior, which included horse stealing and murder. A posse of Williams residents was formed after the killing of Melick and were kept from lynching Torres when a deputy sheriff from Coconino County intervened. Melick was buried in Williams and his grave is still located near Route 66.

The remaining chapters of Cowboys and Gangsters cover incidents in Bisbee and Ruby, Arizona, Hope, New Mexico and El Paso, Texas.

According to his biography by Charles Lewis, Dolan began his career on horseback at age 13 and worked on feature films such as "Tombstone" and "Maverick" in 1993. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Dolan worked other film and television roles, while also working as a weapons handler, horse wrangler and stunt double. He began working in documentary television in 1998.

In 2008 he was awarded a News and Documentary Emmy as a producer of "A Distant Shore: African Americans of D-Day," a History Channel show that highlighted the role of African American soldiers in the Normandy invasion.

Dolan has written and produced episodes of History Channel programs “Battle 360," a series about the USS Enterprise and its crew in World War II; "Patton 360," about General George S. Patton and the conflicts his troops faced, "The Universe," a series about the universe and the human race’s relationship to it; "Life After People," a series that speculates what the Earth might be like if the human race disappeared and 3Net's three-part military series "Live Fire," a behind-the-scenes series that goes into the field with soldiers and Marines. He also served as producer on History Channel's 2011 "History of the World in Two Hours,” a show that cuts 13.7 billion years of history into two hours.

Dolan brought his talents back to Arizona in 2010 when he developed a series about the Navajo Nation Police in Arizona and New Mexico. That same year he wrote and produced the pilot episode of "Navajo Cops" for the National Geographic Channel and went on to produce and write six more episodes because of the popularity of the show. In 2013, Dolan served as a writer, director and senior producer on the Military Channel's "Warrior POV" and was a writer and Senior Producer on H2's "Big History,” a 16-part series narrated by Brian Cranston.

Dolan's first non-fiction book, Cowboys and Gangsters: Stories of an Untamed Southwest, which covers the Prohibition-era of 1920s and 1930s Arizona, Texas and New Mexico, was published by TwoDot Books in the spring of 2016.

Cowboys and Gansters: Stories of an Untamed Southwest is available at several online booksellers.


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