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Buck English’s mug shot, taken at San Quentin in 1895 when he was sentenced to Life in Prison for his robbery and shoot-out with sheriff’s deputies in Napa County. - Archival Photo
Buck English’s mug shot, taken at San Quentin in 1895 when he was sentenced to Life in Prison for his robbery and shoot-out with sheriff’s deputies in Napa County. – Archival Photo
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The best part of any good Hollywood western is the gun fight. That’s a simple fact. There’s an art to them too. Personally, I like the old fashion duels at high noon, but I can also see the allure of the flashier battles. I’m thinking of the sort of fights where the bad guy stands on the roof of the stagecoach and the good guy swoops in from the desert, guns blazing. There’s a natural attraction there, with the moving stagecoach added to the usual equation of good guy plus bad guy plus guns. Do not doubt that this same appeal is what today draws people to their television set when a high-speed chase is underway on the five o’clock news.

It’s also what characterized Buck English’s final showdown with sheriff’s deputies in 1895. The newspaper articles documenting the story pulled at the public imagination just as persistently as televised high-speed chases do today. The sheer dynamism of the battle itself had a lasting impression on everyone involved and lies at the root of Buck English’s mythos. And so rather than start, like tradition would dictate, at the beginning of his story I would like to start at the end.

The beginning of the end started when Lawrence Buchanen English and his friend Breckenridge stepped off a streamer onto a wharf in San Francisco. They had just travelled down the coast from Portland, Oregon and now looked with awe at the sprawling city of San Francisco. It was the beginning of May, 1895 and for Breckenridge this was his first introduction to California. English, on the other hand, had spent much of his young adulthood capering among the oak groves, valleys and saloons of the state.

This wasn’t just a return home for English, though. You could say this about him: he certainly knew what he wanted. He had wasted no time after being released from the Oregon State Penitentiary in September 1894 to hatch a new scheme with his young acquaintance Breckenridge. English hadn’t been terribly successful in Oregon, having been sent to prison twice during his brief several years in the state. Oregon was getting a little too small for him; maybe it was time for a change of scenery. That’s when English remembered his childhood haunts around Napa and Lake Counties back in California. More to the point, he remembered the stagecoaches that ran between Calistoga and Lakeport, often carrying the monthly salaries for the workers of the various mines in the region.

It was this lure that had brought him and his friend from Oregon in the first place and that now found them—after perhaps a brief stop at a saloon—on yet another steamer, this one bound for Marin County and to Napa County beyond. From the day they arrived in San Francisco to the day they lay in wait along a dusty road at the base of Mt. St. Helena, less than a week had passed.

Shortly, the object of their quest was announced with the jangle of horse harnesses and the clank of iron-clad wheels. The unlucky stagecoach driver, a Mr. Palmer, had been robbed just four years prior and at first thought the two men with gunnysacks over their heads demanding money were part of a practical joke. The leveled guns and threats dispelled that notion soon enough. Although there wasn’t a safe full of money on board, the robbers did steal $1,000 from the terrified passengers. English and Breckenridge, now flush with cash, simply walked away.

The two men made it to the Berryessa Valley before they tired of walking and looked for a stage to take them to the town of Napa. Unfortunately for English, his nearly 15-year sojourn out of California was not long enough for people to forget his face and during his jaunt from the crime scene word of their whereabouts had been sent to the Napa County sheriff R.A. Brownlee. Coordinating with Lake County Sheriff Pardee and other constables in the area, Brownlee began closing the trap around English and Breckenridge.

When word reached Sheriff Brownlee that the two robbers were going to take a stage to Napa, the District Attorney Theodore Bell happened to be in the office. Deputizing the young lawyer and grabbing two others, Sheriff Brownlee and his four-man posse set out in a surrey to intercept the stage at the top of the hill leading into town. Unfortunately, instead of getting there ahead of English and Breckenridge and laying a trap, the lawmen arrived at the same time as the criminals.

As English recognized his predicament and the Sheriff his, all hell broke loose.

English was the first to fire, scattering his buckshot at the horse-drawn cart and wounding one of the deputies. Sheriff Brownlee was also slightly wounded from the round. He escaped worse injury because his gunstock had taken the brunt of the volley, but the force of the blow sent him spinning out of the cart. Almost simultaneously, the wounded deputy fired his own answering shot, hitting English.

Apparently unperturbed by his wound, English ordered the driver of the stage to speed on and they rolled past the stalled lawmen. Losing his cool, Breckenridge rolled out of the stage in an attempt to flee the scene. Buckshot fired by the uninjured deputy clipped the young criminal and convinced him that continued resistance was not a healthy option. He promptly surrendered.

Meanwhile, English and his stagecoach were coming to a corner farther down the road, pursued on foot by District Attorney Theodore Bell. Just before disappearing around the corner, the young lawyer got off a well-placed shot that sent English slouching against the driver of the coach. The posse and the defeated Breckenridge in tow overtook the stagecoach farther down the hill. Next to the driver lay the now unconscious Buck English.

When first published by journalists of the day, this story electrified the entire west coast. Newspapers from Los Angeles to British Columbia, Canada chronicled the recovery, trial and sentencing of this true Wild West desperado. The ensuing public obsession firmly cemented the tale of Buck English in the annals of local history, to be retold and reimagined by each succeeding generation.

Tony Pierucci is curator of Lake County Museums

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