Big Nose George Parrott was a petty crook, horse thief and stage coach robber in Wyoming during most of the 1870s. He made a few local headlines but longed for more, both money and fame. Gangs he rode with were not famous like Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch or the James Gang, two groups he rode with many years after his death in dime novels and writers dreams. Now the fame he sought while robbing stage coaches and hardware stores has finally become part of his legend.
Today he is famous, at least in Wyoming, but maybe not for what he wanted. There are so many versions of his train or attempted train robbery in Wyoming that it is often hard to believe any of them. So like all writers I choose to put together parts of the many stories and come up with my own. (I may have also thrown in a few of my own ideas.)
Big Nose George and his gang of two, Sim Jan and Frank McKinney had started to tear up a small section of railroad track near Medicine Bow Wyoming. The three were so content on working that they did not see an official of the railroad checking track. Once he and the outlaws spotted each other the official high tailed it back to the office and wired for help. While he ran back east to the office the outlaws ran south and west toward the mountain side hamlet of Elk Mountain.
Railroad official Tip Vincent and Carbon county Deputy Sheriff Robert Widdowfield soon caught up with the outlaws. A good old west shot out ensued with Big Nose and the gang killing both Widdowfield and Vincent. Widdowfield reportedly taking a shotgun blast in the face and Vincent shot in the back tiring to get away.
It took three years but the law finally caught up with up with Big Nose George Parrott in Montana and he was taken back to the city of Rawlins in Carbon County Wyoming for trial. Within days he attempted to escape but he was no better at this than train robbing and he never got outside the jail house building. The people of Rawlins, although a good humor bunch did not find this funny. Within hours he was ripped from the jail by a mob of 200 and lynched.
This should have been the end of the line for Big Nose George but in his unusual case we’re just getting warmed up. The body was given to a local doctor and his apprentice who attempted a crude autopsy sawing off the top of Parrots head in search of some type of outlaw lobe in his brain. Not sure if they found much of anything—see bungled robbery and escape above. But the story still does not end.
Will it ever?
Big Nose George was skinned and made into a pair of shoes a small bag and according to some a belt and a wallet. The shoes were worn by a local doctor on many special occasions including his own inaugural ball after being elected governor of Wyoming in 1893.
Big Nose George’s body was pickled in salt brine and kept for a year or more in various business places in and around Rawlins Wyoming. Reportedly a favorite game of locals was to take unsuspecting visitors to see the famous Big Nose George—the big game likely went something like this:
“Hey Pard ya ever heard of Big Nose George the outlaw?”
“Sure everyone’s heard of him.”
“Ya wanna see him.”
“Not likely, he’s been dead for years”
The local comic then reaches over opens the wooden whiskey keg reaches in grabs a few parts of ol’ Big Nose and pulls him out of the barrel and starts laughing hysterically. At this point visitor passes out or throws up.
But a year later all the parts of Big Nose George disappeared—until 1950 when a construction project unearthed his bones—Big Nose George was back.
Historical Note—The skull and shoes can still be viewed in a downtown Rawlins Wyoming museum. There was a bag that appeared to be a medical bag but it has not been seen in more than a century. As for the belt and wallet –they may have existed only in legend; if they were real, like the bag they are lost forever.
Personal Note—My wife and I live within an hour’s drive of the train robbery site, my son and his family live on a hill overlooking the train tracks Big Nose tried to tear up just outside of Medicine Bow Wyoming.
Wyoming Writer Historian & Photographer
Fact Not Fiction Today--Or Facts as I See Them!
The First Tribal Indian People of Wyoming
Only the rocks and the mountains really know, only the rocks and the mountains have been here long enough to know and they are not saying anything. No one knows when the first tribal type American Indians first settled in Wyoming. We know for sure they were here before John Colter and the trappers came to Wyoming in the early 1800s. It is probable the introduction of the horse was responsible for bringing most of the Indian settlement to Wyoming and populating the state with several language groups of Indians. Most historians would agree only the ancient Sheep Eater tribe lived in Wyoming before the horse became a part of everyday live for the tribes of Wyoming.
Because the horse brought the Indian to Wyoming the Spanish were most responsible for the settlement of Wyoming. The Spanish and their flamboyant leader Francisco Vasquez Coronado, in 1540 explored much of present day Arizona and the American southwest, looking for the famed but mythical Seven Cities of Cibola. They failed to find the magnificent golden riches of the Seven Cites and Coronado turned northeast leading his 300 men to the fabulous area of Quivira in search of riches. After a long and fruitless search they turned back but not until they had reached southeast Nebraska near the present day city of Fairbury. On the way they left behind dozens of horses that would be the beginning of the famous Indian ponies of the plains. Coronado found no riches, instead found poor tribes leading a day to day agriculture existence, often living in crude stick and mud shelters, some tribes, of better hunters seemed a little better off, but no gold, not then and not today.
If all this makes sense then the Indian tribes of Wyoming were not here until much after Coronado introduced horses in the 1540s, best guess, the early 1700s. Indians of early Wyoming had already domesticated the dog and with the horse there were two animals to help with their day to day chores.
For more than a century (early 1700s to early 1800s) these, now indigenous, people roamed free on the plains and in the mountains of Wyoming. They may have experienced the freest existence in the history of the North American continent. Living a nomadic, buffalo hunting life fit these people well and they thrived, until the white men came, forever changing the life of Indians in Wyoming.
More than any group of people since, they respected nature and the powers of nature. Living a simple existence in the world’s first camper, the very mobile teepee, following the vast herds of bison and adding to their diet with antelope, rabbits other game animals and various wild roots, berries and other nourishing plants.
Life among these people could best be described as harsh and often short—but a better life may not exist. Who was first, the Sheep Eaters, as mentioned above, are thought by many historians to have been the first permanent residents of Wyoming and the one group to predate the horse in this area.
Only the rocks and the mountains really know, only the rocks and the mountains have been here long enough to know and they are not saying anything. No one knows when the first tribal type American Indians first settled in Wyoming. We know for sure they were here before John Colter and the trappers came to Wyoming in the early 1800s. It is probable the introduction of the horse was responsible for bringing most of the Indian settlement to Wyoming and populating the state with several language groups of Indians. Most historians would agree only the ancient Sheep Eater tribe lived in Wyoming before the horse became a part of everyday live for the tribes of Wyoming.
Because the horse brought the Indian to Wyoming the Spanish were most responsible for the settlement of Wyoming. The Spanish and their flamboyant leader Francisco Vasquez Coronado, in 1540 explored much of present day Arizona and the American southwest, looking for the famed but mythical Seven Cities of Cibola. They failed to find the magnificent golden riches of the Seven Cites and Coronado turned northeast leading his 300 men to the fabulous area of Quivira in search of riches. After a long and fruitless search they turned back but not until they had reached southeast Nebraska near the present day city of Fairbury. On the way they left behind dozens of horses that would be the beginning of the famous Indian ponies of the plains. Coronado found no riches, instead found poor tribes leading a day to day agriculture existence, often living in crude stick and mud shelters, some tribes, of better hunters seemed a little better off, but no gold, not then and not today.
If all this makes sense then the Indian tribes of Wyoming were not here until much after Coronado introduced horses in the 1540s, best guess, the early 1700s. Indians of early Wyoming had already domesticated the dog and with the horse there were two animals to help with their day to day chores.
For more than a century (early 1700s to early 1800s) these, now indigenous, people roamed free on the plains and in the mountains of Wyoming. They may have experienced the freest existence in the history of the North American continent. Living a nomadic, buffalo hunting life fit these people well and they thrived, until the white men came, forever changing the life of Indians in Wyoming.
More than any group of people since, they respected nature and the powers of nature. Living a simple existence in the world’s first camper, the very mobile teepee, following the vast herds of bison and adding to their diet with antelope, rabbits other game animals and various wild roots, berries and other nourishing plants.
Life among these people could best be described as harsh and often short—but a better life may not exist. Who was first, the Sheep Eaters, as mentioned above, are thought by many historians to have been the first permanent residents of Wyoming and the one group to predate the horse in this area.
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