Wichita Falls Bank Robbery of 1896

Bank president Joseph A. Kemp had summoned ten Texas Rangers under Captain Bill McDonald to guard against a holdup. When nothing happened they left for Fort Worth on February 25, the day Foster Crawford and Elmer "Kid" Lewis robbed the bank. The Rangers came back by train, and McDonald negotiated the two men's surrender on a promise of protection from the crowd. Instead a mob broke into the jail and lynched them, hanging them from a telephone pole at Seventh and Ohio. They were buried in one grave in the pauper section of Riverside Cemetery.

What the plaque says

Wichita Falls Bank Robbery of 1896 On the afternoon of February 25, 1896, two cowboys, Foster Crawford and Elmer "Kid" Lewis, robbed the City National Bank, then located at Ohio and 7th Street (2 blocks east). They killed cashier Frank Dorsey, took about $410 cash, and fled on horseback. A posse of citizens and Texas Rangers captured the pair that night hiding in a thicket outside of town. The next day, after the Rangers departed, the anger of the townspeople turned to violence. On the night of February 26, a mob dragged the prisoners from the jail and lynched them in front of the bank building. (1978)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• World's Littlest Skyscraper — 0.2 mi
  A four-story brick tower in downtown Wichita Falls, 40 feet tall and 10 feet wide, the leftover of a 1919 oil-boom office deal in which, the story goes, investors misread inches as feet.
• Kell House Museum — 0.4 mi
  The 1909 Classic Revival house of Frank Kell, the miller and railroad builder who helped make Wichita Falls a city, shown by guided tour with its family furniture still in place.
• Lake Arrowhead State Park — 12 mi
  A prairie park on the north shore of the Wichita Falls water-supply lake, which drowned the town of Halsell in 1965-66, with mesquite campsites, a lighted pier and more than 200 bird species.
• Clay County 1890 Jail Museum — 18 mi
  Henrietta's 1890 stone jail a block from the domed courthouse, now the county museum, with its original cells, a gallows that was never used and the sheriff's family quarters.

More markers nearby

• Joseph Hudson Barwise — steps away
• Texas Governor James V. Allred — steps away
• First County Officials — steps away
• Lost Battalion — steps away