Canyon Springs Station: Site of the "Treasure Run" Stage Robbery

The panel's dead passenger was a company man. Hugh O. Campbell, the line's telegraph operator, was riding the treasure coach south to a new post at the Jenney Stockade station when the volley from the barn killed him. Gale Hill, the guard who jumped down to chock the wheels, was shot in the chest and arm and lived, though one account says the wounds shortened his life. Sources disagree with the panel's forty percent lost; the Wyoming Almanac says nearly all was recovered but one gold bar. The broken safe went to the Stagecoach Museum in Lusk.

What the plaque says

Canyon Springs Station: Site of the "Treasure Run" Stage Robbery Outlaws haunted the Cheyenne - Deadwood Stage Line during the gold boom in Deadwood, Dakota Territory. By the end of 1877, gold seekers had mined more than ten million dollars worth of gold from the Black Hills, which the stage companies were desperate to protect. In 1877, the Cheyenne - Deadwood stage company purchased a "salamander" iron safe and installed it in one of their stages. The manufacturer's warranty claimed that it could not be opened in less than six days without knowledge of the combination. This specially outfitted stage made weekly "treasure runs" to Cheyenne. On the afternoon of 26 September 1878, a band of outlaws rode into the Canyon Springs Station, locked the stable hand in the grain room, hid in the barn, and prepared for a shootout. The stage pulled into the ambush, and was attacked while the horse team was being changed. As bullets flew, one passenger died while two guards and two outlaws were wounded. The outlaws seized the stagecoach and drove it into the trees, where they cracked the uncrackable safe and made off with over $27,000 in gold bullion, currency, and jewelry (approximately $1.75 million in 2010). Forty percent of the gold was never recovered — according to local legend it is buried somewhere nearby.

Where it stands

More markers nearby

• Cambria Salt Mine — 7.3 mi
• Cambria — 11 mi
• Inyan Kara Methodist Episcopal Church — 16 mi
• Site of Field City — 18 mi