Black Jack Ketchum

The two men the panel says he killed have names. In June 1896 Tom Ketchum and his brother Sam, just off the Bell Ranch, robbed Levi and Morris Herzstein's store and post office at Liberty, the settlement north of where Tucumcari stands. Levi Herzstein gathered a few men and followed them, and at the outlaws' camp he and Hermenejildo Gallegos were shot dead. Neither brother was ever charged with the killings, and Morris Herzstein soon left for Clayton. The panel's 1880s are a decade early: the Ketchums' robberies belong to the 1890s.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Black Jack Ketchum The last of the train robbers, Black Jack Ketchum, who terrorized the railroads in the 1880's killed two men near this spot and hid out in a cave near Saddleback Mesa to the Southwest. The swarthy bandit was wounded in his last robbery and hanged in 1901.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Blue Swallow Motel — 13 mi
  A twelve-room tourist court on Tucumcari's stretch of Route 66, built in 1939, run for four decades by one woman, and lit by one of the most photographed motel signs on the road.

More markers nearby

• Tucumcari Mountain — 11 mi
• Yetta Kohn (1843-1917) — 13 mi
• Comanche Country — 13 mi
• Tucumcari Mountain — 13 mi