Diamondfield Jack

The sign never names the dead. They were Daniel Cummings and John Wilson, Mormon sheepherders found shot in their wagon in February 1896 after grazing across a deadline the Sparks-Harrell Cattle Company had drawn between cattle and sheep range. Davis worked for the company and had boasted he would kill the next herders who crossed it. William Borah prosecuted him. The two company men who confessed, James Bower and Jeff Gray, were acquitted on self-defense, and John Sparks, by then governor of Nevada, pressed for the pardon. Davis made and lost a fortune at Goldfield.

What the plaque says

Diamondfield Jack J. L. Davis....Diamondfield Jack....spent most of 6 years in the Cassia County Jail while the courts and pardon board were trying to figure out what to do with him. By far the best known of the gunmen who fought in Idaho's sheep and cattle wars, he was tried here for shooting two sheepherders in 1896. After he was convicted, other cattlemen confessed to the crime. Twice he narrowly escaped hanging before the pardon board turned him loose late in 1902 after deciding he wasn't guilty after all. 306 Text prepared by the Idaho Historical Society Marker made & installed by Idaho Transportation Department Note: The old Cassia County Jail stood in this park.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• City of Rocks National Reserve — 24 mi
  Two granite spires the emigrants steered by. They look like twins and formed about 2.5 billion years apart.

More markers nearby

• Albion State Normal School — 0.2 mi
• Idahome — 9.1 mi
• Hudspeth's Cutoff — 12 mi
• Starrh's Ferry — 16 mi