Celebration of "Desperado"

[GlennLover]

Tlr, do you know how Coffeyville got it's name?

[thelastresort]

Nope, had a quick check and if Wikipedia is true it's named after a colonel who won a coin toss with a surveyor

[Prettymaid]

Thanks TLR! I'm enjoying it!

[sodascouts]

I'm fascinatined by this stuff, too! In fact, I actually visited Coffeyville a couple years ago and purchased several souvenirs: the autobiographical Beyond the Law written by Emmett Dalton, an informative book called The Dalton Gang and Their Family Ties which also talks about their sister Eva Dalton, and a reprint of an 1892 account of the incident called Last Raid of the Daltons. The latter was written by the editor of the Coffeyville Journal at the time. Finally, I got a reprint of the newspaper published the day after the raid. Interesting stuff!

Oh, I almost forgot - I got a very amateurishly made documentary about it as well put out by the people who run the Dalton museum in Coffeyville. Not the greatest, but it does have a film clip of an older Emmett Dalton, who (as noted by thelastresort) had gone on to be an "expert consultant" for Hollywood Western movies after he got a pardon. Ain't that America!

[GlennLover]

Nope, had a quick check and if Wikipedia is true it's named after a colonel who won a coin toss with a surveyor

Thanks.

[sodascouts]

Some photos I took during my visit:

This is actually painted on the side of the hardware store where the townsfolk armed themselves to defeat the Dalton Gang:



A peek inside one of the banks (I took it through the window; the old Condon bank was demolished, but First National is preserved):


Death Alley:


Yes, they actually have marked on the ground "chalk outlines" where the outlaws fell:


This is a copy of the book Glenn has said that Ned Doheny gave him - the one that details the outlaws and their deaths, inspiring the theme and art of Desperado:

[sodascouts]

And here is my off-the-cuff retracing of their steps, with my oh-so-dramatic narration. Not for those who get motion sickness, as I hurry along to "recreate" their journey, my camera bouncing hard. I am whispering my "narration" because I am afraid one of the locals will hear me and think I am an idiot (it was Sunday and the place was deserted, but I worried someone would happen by).

OK, maybe I was getting a little carried away, but like I said I find this all terribly interesting.

http://s18.photobucket.com/user/glen...32901.mp4.html

[thelastresort]

Awesome pics Soda, thanks for sharing! Amazing to see inside the old First National but the chalk outline of the corpses is a tad weird :s

[sodascouts]

Yeah, it was weird... and I didn't even post my photo of their recreation of the corpses in the jail using mannequins....

Here's my photobucket account with all the photos I took if anyone's interested in seeing more:
http://s18.photobucket.com/user/glen...ffeyville2011/

[UndertheWire]

This is great. Thanks to both of you for sharing what you know.