The Hanging of Sam Bass

"The last of the old west train robbers" - Julesburg, Colorado was the site of the last train robbery hanging in the "Old West". Ironically, it was the first and largest ever train robbery in the new state of Colorado.

The Great Train Robbery of 1877

The robbery actually happened near Big Springs, Texas in 1877, when Texas outlaw Sam Bass and four companions made off with $60,000 (roughly 215 lbs.) in gold currency. They tried to make their escape by riding from water hole to water hole following the old Chisholm cattle trail, heading for Cheyenne, Wyoming.

The Bass gang followed the Arkansas River leaving an obvious trail pointing towards the familiar outlaw hangout of Pueblo, Colorado. Then the outlaws cleverly turned, riding north up the Sand Creek drainage and then down the Beaver Creek drainage headed for the South Platte River.

The Hunt for Sam Bass

The word went out by telegraph to all the local marshals and sheriffs, notably from Fort Laramie and from the railroad town of Julesburg who formed posses. The eager volunteers were looking for the railroad reward money as much as the notorious Sam Bass gang.

The Hidden Treasure

Fleeing from the alerted local posse but weighed down by the heavy gold loot taken from the robbery, the gang split up and buried their shares. Each equal share weighed in at roughly 36 lbs, worth approximately $328,000 at the time of this writing!

The gold was hidden in places only known to the individual bandit. Each and every one of the five bandits were eventually tracked down and either captured or killed, including Sam Bass. Each of the captured bandits recounted the same basic story, but neither revealed where they had hidden the loot.

Justice in Julesburg

Sam was given an invitation by the judge to be the guest of honor at the hanging in front of the courthouse in Julesburg. Thus ended the long and notorious career of Sam Bass.

The Lost Caches

The five caches of treasure have never been found. These golden treasure troves still lie hidden by the shifting sand hills along the banks of Beaver Creek on eastern Colorado's great plains.

For treasure hunters, this represents one of the most tantalizing lost treasures in Colorado history—five separate caches of gold, each worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, scattered along the escape route of the Bass gang.