Bill Dalton and the Cimarron Train Robbery

By Nancy Ohnick

I have spent a lot of time researching the Dalton Gang. My initial interest was their connection with their sister, Eva, who used to live in Meade. It is Eva Dalton Whipple’s home that has been preserved as the Dalton Gang Hideout. She came to Meade when she was about nineteen or twenty, married John Whipple October 25, 1887, and lived in that house until they left Meade in the early 1890’s. Their marriage license, deeds, and the Meade County tax rolls all testify as to her time here.

I never could quite prove that the Dalton brothers actually “hid out” here, but I have eye-witness accounts of what that tunnel looked like when it was just a rough rain wash covered with timbers and earth, and it stands to reason that family would have visited her during her time in Meade. She was close enough to her brothers to travel to Coffeyville with her mother when Bob and Grat were killed and Emmett was severely wounded, a fact that was reported in detail in the Coffeyville newspaper.

What always puzzled me was bits and pieces I had learned about a train robbery at Cimarron reportedly perpetrated by the Dalton Gang. The problem was, it happened after the gang was killed and caught at Coffeyville on October 5, 1892. I was so please this past year to finally put the pieces of that puzzle together. It all happened because of the book I published for LaDonna Meyers, “Cimarron Chronicles.”

I got an email from Roger Myers (no relation to LaDonna) telling me how much he had enjoyed the book. We corresponded back a forth a bit and we came to realize that we had known each other in year’s past. In fact, I used to be his baby sitter! He was the son of Dan and Thelma Myers who used to live in my neighborhood growing up in Meade. Roger told me how he was a history writer also and, long story short, he had written the account of the Cimarron robbery years before for “True West” magazine.

I bought the rights to the story from Roger and added it to my book, “The Dalton Gang and Their Family Ties” of which I was in the process of publishing a new edition. With the story from Roger and new research I had done I came up with this great addition for my book. 

The outlaws who robbed the train at Cimarron were actually the Dalton-Doolin Gang, with the headliners in that gang being Bill Dalton and Bill Doolin. Bill Dalton was never mentioned as taking part in any outlaw activity until after his brothers were killed in Coffeyville. The newspapers there gave a detailed account of Bill Dalton’s vengeful attitude toward what had happened to his brothers, and it wasn’t long before he turned to crime.

The Cimarron robbery took place on June 10, 1893. I have traced the gang’s trail from Beaver where they stayed for a few days before coming north. They probably rode up the Jones and Plummer Trail because they showed up at the Sol Zortman place northwest of Fowler a few days before the robbery. Dean Zortman shared with me the stories that had been handed down by his grandfather about the event. They stopped around noon and asked to water and feed their horses and Nancy Zortman asked them to eat with them, which they did. Later, on their way back through, Sol and also a neighbor saw the gang moving fast, they didn’t stop this time, nor did they greet the settlers.

A few miles northeast of Meade the gang stopped at the J. H. Randolph home where they forced the settlers at gunpoint to give them a meal. Carrie Anshutz wrote in “Cimarron Chronicles” that they came by their place and when Doc Anshutz and her little brother saw them on the trail the outlaws waved them on in a gesture that clearly meant, “leave us alone.” When reporting every encounter along the trail the sentence would end with, “later we learned they had robbed a train at Cimarron,” thus leaving a trail for history.

Even if you already own a copy of “The Dalton Gang and Their Family Ties” it’s almost worth getting the third edition just to get the whole story of the Cimarron robbery. The book can be found at the Dalton Gang Hideout, Meade Historical Museum, and Back Room Printing, in Meade, Trails West or Hastings in Dodge City, or on the web at www.prairiebooks.com.