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| Photo above is a screen clip from the Sergio Leone's 1968 "Once Upon A Time In The West" It looks remarkably similar to what 1889 Milford, Utah, must have looked like. |
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| Milford map circa 1889. |
And then what? Well, Buckey correctly foresaw big trouble if he tried to get the robbers back down to Lee's Ferry and across the Painted Desert to Prescott. Talk about a recipe for trouble! So, he wisely decided to take the prisoners to Milford, Utah, the nearest railhead to Panguitch.
Some reports have said he took the prisoners to Marysvale. However, Marysvale didn't become a rail head until the year 1900. Milford was reached by the Utah Southern Railroad in May 1880. It was a long and tough haul over some low mountains into the alkali desert beyond. Milford lay about 100 miles from Panguitch so it had to be a 2-3 day trip to the rail head. And a dusty one at that.
Milford's residents and business people had long ago growth accustomed to watching for dust clouds on the horizon. Such a dust cloud meant someone was coming to visit.
In 1889, Milford was basically a ghost-town-in-the-making. The incredibly rich Horn Silver Mine west of town had physically collapsed in 1885, burying forever the rich lode ore deep beneath the San Francisco Mountains. Frisco, a once ribald, lawless mining camp went from 6,000 people to almost none by 1889. Milford population plummeted as well and barely 500 people remained to attempt to scratch a meager living out of the dusty, waterless land.
Indeed a writer for the "Deseret News" said in the spring of 1889, "Milford is almost deserted. But for the presence of the railway, it would present a forlorn appearance. The expectations entertained of the place when the road first reached it---that it would be a modified Cheyenne---have long since vanished into thin air; indeed, all the boom it ever had was the prestige imparted by the enterprise and capital of the Utah Central Company, and this, with all its aid and influence, could not evangelize a naked, barren plain into a bounding metropolis."
In to this "almost deserted" town rode a group of eight men swirling dust and looking like something out of a Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. In April 1889, Milford almost certain resembled a movie set for one of Leone's famous movies. Somehow Buckey and his possemen got their prisoners loaded onto a Utah Southern train and headed north to Salt Lake City.
Source of Milford information:
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5803&context=etd
Some reports have said he took the prisoners to Marysvale. However, Marysvale didn't become a rail head until the year 1900. Milford was reached by the Utah Southern Railroad in May 1880. It was a long and tough haul over some low mountains into the alkali desert beyond. Milford lay about 100 miles from Panguitch so it had to be a 2-3 day trip to the rail head. And a dusty one at that.
Milford's residents and business people had long ago growth accustomed to watching for dust clouds on the horizon. Such a dust cloud meant someone was coming to visit.
In 1889, Milford was basically a ghost-town-in-the-making. The incredibly rich Horn Silver Mine west of town had physically collapsed in 1885, burying forever the rich lode ore deep beneath the San Francisco Mountains. Frisco, a once ribald, lawless mining camp went from 6,000 people to almost none by 1889. Milford population plummeted as well and barely 500 people remained to attempt to scratch a meager living out of the dusty, waterless land.
Indeed a writer for the "Deseret News" said in the spring of 1889, "Milford is almost deserted. But for the presence of the railway, it would present a forlorn appearance. The expectations entertained of the place when the road first reached it---that it would be a modified Cheyenne---have long since vanished into thin air; indeed, all the boom it ever had was the prestige imparted by the enterprise and capital of the Utah Central Company, and this, with all its aid and influence, could not evangelize a naked, barren plain into a bounding metropolis."
In to this "almost deserted" town rode a group of eight men swirling dust and looking like something out of a Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. In April 1889, Milford almost certain resembled a movie set for one of Leone's famous movies. Somehow Buckey and his possemen got their prisoners loaded onto a Utah Southern train and headed north to Salt Lake City.
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Utah Southern R.R. train circa 1889 in Milford, Utah.
The crude screen clip above is from a 1957 Masters thesis about the history of Milford. From the general outline of the depot at right, we can reasonably speculate the Milford depot resembled the Utah Southern depot below at Provo.
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https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5803&context=etd
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