Sam Bass and the Big Springs Robbery

Bass reached Big Springs broke. In 1876 he and Joel Collins drove a herd of Texas longhorns north, sold it with about $8,000 in hand, part of it owed to the ranchers back home, and gambled the money away in Ogallala and Deadwood. A freighting venture failed, so they recruited men, stole horses and held up seven stagecoaches without making back the loss. The Handbook of Texas names Collins, not Bass, as leader of the six who stopped the eastbound express here, and counts the passengers' loss at $1,300 and four gold watches.

What the plaque says

Sam Bass and the Big Springs Robbery The first and greatest robbery of a Union Pacific train took place near here on the night of September 18, 1877. The legendary Sam Bass and five companions, after capturing John Barnhart, station- master, and destroying the telegraph, forced Union Pacific express train No. 4 to halt. A reported $60,000 in new $20 gold pieces and currency was taken from the express car, while about a thousand dollars and a number of watches were taken from passengers. The accumulated loot from this, the Big Springs Robbery, it is said, was then divided by the outlaws, beneath the Lone Tree then growing on the north side of the river. After making the division, the robbers then split into pairs and fled their pursuers. Joel Collins and Bill Heffridge were killed at Buffalo, Kansas. Jim Berry was killed near Mexico, Missouri, while Tom Nixon and Jack Davis were never located. After forming another band and robbing four trains in Texas, Sam Bass was killed by Texas Rangers at Round Rock, Texas, on July 21, 1878; it was his 27th birthday. His epitaph reads "A Brave Man Reposes In Death Here. Why Was He Not True?" Big Springs Garden Club Historical Land Mark Council

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Julesburg — 11 mi
  The town that moved four times: a trading post, a stage stop burned in 1865, the wickedest end-of-track town on the Union Pacific, and finally Denver Junction renamed.
• Ash Hollow State Historical Park — 16 mi
  The emigrants' spring below Windlass Hill, six miles from the Blue Water Creek camp where Harney's soldiers killed eighty-six Lakota in 1855, and where their belongings came home in 2025.
• Lake McConaughy and Kingsley Dam — 23 mi
  Nebraska's largest reservoir, 22 miles of North Platte water and white sand beaches behind a 1941 hydraulic-fill dam, built so farms far downstream could water their crops.

More markers nearby

• Waterman Sod House — steps away
• Phelps Hotel — steps away
• Colorado's Northeast Corner — 4.3 mi
• Big Springs — 7.3 mi