Following the Wild Bunch
From Landusky, Montana, to Alma, New Mexico.
By: Candy Moulton 11/01/2008
They traveled many routes across the West in their quest for riches and for sanctuary, including what became known as the Outlaw Trail, stretching from the Canadian border to the Mexican border. The pathway from Landusky, Montana, to Alma, New Mexico, took the Wild Bunch through Hole-in-the-Wall Country, across the Red Desert, through Browns Park and on to Robbers Roost. In this colorful country, they engaged in an even more colorful collection of escapades.
Before he even joined the Wild Bunch, Harvey Logan’s deadly shot was known to citizens of Montana, especially after his altercation with the founder of Landusky.
Landusky met his end in late December 1894. Harvey Logan threatened him, and the two got in a fistfight. Landusky ended up pulling a gun on Harvey. When Landusky’s gun misfired, Logan fatally shot back.
Fourteen months later, in February 1896, Jim Winters, a neighboring rancher in Landusky, killed Johnny Logan in a dispute over homesteading rights. Five years passed, but Harvey avenged his brother’s death in 1901 by killing Winters.
The graves of Powell “Pike” Landusky and Harvey’s brother Johnny have bodies in them because men overreacted to situations that might have been settled with simple fisticuffs, had there been a cooler head to turn them.
By the late 1890s, Harvey Logan went by the alias Kid Curry, and was riding with Robert Leroy Parker (Butch Cassidy) and Harry Longabaugh (Sundance Kid) as part of the Wild Bunch. Landusky, Montana, became one of the northern-most points of the Outlaw Trail they used, and that is where we will start on this road of the renegades.
Ghost North of the Missouri
Landusky is not much of a town these days. In fact, it is almost a ghost located north of the Missouri River.
You can travel the route of the Wild Bunch by taking U.S. 191 south to Lewistown then heading east and south on U.S. 87 through Roundup to Billings. At Billings, drive onto Interstate 90 and follow it east and south through Crow Agency to Sheridan and Buffalo, Wyoming. Plan to spend the night in Buffalo so you can visit the Jim Gatchell Museum before you head south on I-25 and west on state route 190 into Hole-in-the-Wall Country.
Every member of the Wild Bunch spent some time in the Hole during the late 19th century, taking advantage of the isolation of the land and the support they received from small ranchers. Named for the opening in the red wall that allowed access, Hole-in-the-Wall today is a site on public land managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, bordered by private ranches that ring the area.
Like it was when Butch and the boys hung out here, Hole-in-the-Wall Country is isolated, remote, seemingly devoid of people. Some are around, that’s for sure, but as the late, great cowboy singer Chris LeDoux (who lived near Kaycee) once said, “You just can’t see them from the road.” Could it be because there aren’t even many roads around these parts?
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