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Michaeldavitt — Billy and
Published: 2009-04-13 05:17:15 +0000 UTC; Views: 539; Favourites: 3; Downloads: 10
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Billy and good fiends Tom and CharlieFt. Sumner, New Mexico
Billy The Kid was killed in Ft. Sumner back in 1881, and today it is the only reason anyone makes the trip. The road south from Santa Rosa, NM, is unmarred by other towns or highway patrol, and soon enough, the signs for Ft. Sumner's main attraction appear.
First, yellow paint-on-plywood says only: SEE BILLY THE KID'S REAL GRAVE. Just ahead, another sign reads BILLY THE KID MUSEUM (though tacked above it is a newer thought: "Featured On ABC Prime Time Live.") We don't know it yet, but the signs are for two different and competing museums. Then we hit a third sign, an official town sign, which, we realize later, is a product of local peacemakers, "We've got the Kid...and so much more." It features a painting of Billy The Kid's Gravestone.
But is it a painting of the Kid's real gravestone, or of the fake? You can see where this is going.
The Billy The Kid Museum, downtown, has been here since the fifties, with decayed mannequins of Billy and Sheriff Pat Garrett outside, in hothouse-like glass boxes perched on the second floor. The museum is owned by the Sweet family, second generation, and has accumulated the sedimentary layers of local junk and curiosity you'd expect. A 2-headed Hereford calf, WWI artillery shells, plows and barber chairs, typewriters and irons, foreign money, a 1962 Barbie and 1965 Ken, a Thermos from 1908. Near the ceiling hang various thrift store Billy The Kid portraits.
In the Billy The Kid Room, cases of memorabilia feature the Kid's rifle, a lock of hair, and a rock from his Stinking Springs hideout. His name is carved among the names and initials of others, like it was an old public picnic table. A curtain is pressed behind a large glass frame. On the glass is painted "This Curtain Hung Over Door Where 'Kid' Was Killed!"
Outside, there are the graves of Billy The Kid, and two of his friends resting to his right, surrounded by a chain link fence. At the back, a large gravestone reads "PALS." Just above the big stone, a one word sign is wired to the chain link fence, so that it appears in everyone's snapshots. It says "Replica."
The lady at the museum gift shop said that Mr. Sweet had to built the replica because the real cemetery was decayed. Not eager to upset the balance, we let it go at that. She makes sure we know that the museum with the real grave is not an official state monument, either, though the other museum would have you believe it. Both are several miles south of town, but the only official state monument in the area deals with Indian deprivations.
Fake Billy the Kid grave.
A few blocks down the road toward the next museum, we see a billboard saying "Old Fort Sumner Museum & Real Grave of Billy The Kid." Real Grave is italicized.
The real grave is in a real graveyard behind the Old Fort Sumner Museum ("Since 1932 - De Baca County's Original Museum"). This museum has The Kid's letters to Governor Lew Wallace, press photos from Young Guns I AND II, the coroner's report in both English and Spanish, and The Kid's life story told in 14 painted works by Noted Artist Howard Suttle.
But the first museum has exhausted our desire for detritus, and we quickly make it back to the authentic gravesite. First, biting flies block our path. Then a steel cage does.
Why the big cage, akin to something they use in WWF? It turns out that the real headstone had been stolen three times, the first time back in 1950. It stayed missing for 26 years, before it was found in Granbury, TX (a town once filled with aging outlaws whose deaths were faked). Then it got swiped in 1981, recovered a week later in Huntington Beach, CA, and vamoosed again more recently.
Real Billy the Kid grave.
Coins (almost all quarters when we visited, an authentic tribute) are scattered on the graves. The Kid's Pals are unadorned. The Kid is under reinforced concrete, his footstone restrained by its own iron shackles.
Ironically, after all of this, the exact location of The Kid's grave in the graveyard isn't known. A flood washed away the wooden tombstones not long after Billy's death, and the current grave site is just a guess.
Across the street from the Old Ft. Sumner Museum is a billboard for the Billy The Kid Museum. It mentions that it is the most complete privately owned museum in the Southwest, and that it has Billy's Rifle, but does not mention its replica grave. It does, however, advertise Clean Restrooms.
The Billy the Kid Museum has one exhibit showing that in 1962, Lincoln County, NM, filed suit to have The Kid's body exhumed and replanted in Lincoln (the other Billy The Kid hotbed in New Mexico). Lincoln lost the case, but the fact that Ft. Sumner had lost the gravestone (and its mealticket) a decade earlier couldn't have helped matters. Looking back, the replica grave probably showed the judge that Ft. Sumner had just enough dedication that they deserved to keep the body.
Oh, and did we mention that the town has Tombstone Races, where challengers run around with 80 lb. replicas during the second week in June? That sounds like something the judge ordered back in '62, as a civic act of mortification so that they would be more careful in the future
from RoadsideAmerican .com
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Comments: 13
My new dream is to visit the Old Fort Sumner Museum
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yes, I think you would like it! thanks for your interest
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If I ever go to America, I'll visit it. I'm far more interested in the memories of the ol' West than them big modern cities...
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thanks for your kind note. here's a poem for you:
"The Poetic History Of Billy the Kid"
William Bonney was small and slight
A skinny fellow short in height
Young, strong, courageous and brave
That’s what would lead him to his grave
The boy became an outlaw at a very young age
It started in a fight he chose to engage
At 18 years old the first man he did kill
Was a blacksmith named Frank Cahill
This would start his dark and dangerous course
The kid with a crooked grin and hardly no remorse
From Arizona to New Mexico he would go
Landing a job with rancher Frank B. Coe
He then met up with Englishman Tunstall’s gang
From there the Kid’s life would never be the same
John Tunstall took a fancy to Billy
Gave him gifts of a saddle, new guns and a filly
Jimmy Dolan was the leader in town
He wanted his competition to be taken down
Tunstall met his fate alone
His name was written upon a stone
Billy vowed to kill the ones responsible for the death of his friend
And that’s where Billy the Kid’s legacy would begin
The Regulators were born a few days later
First they would start with Morton and Baker
They waited in Lincoln for Brady to arrive
To assassinate the sheriff and take his life
The Kid was indicted and sure to hang
Along with a few others in his gang
The Lincoln County fight was now a war
All this started over a general store
Buckshot Roberts rode with Dolan’s posse the day Tunstall was killed
It cost him his life in the gunfight at Blazer’s Mill
Dick Brewer lost his life in the very same way
And they were laid to rest side by side on the very same day
Dolan’s wrong doings were often hid
And the law came down on Billy the Kid
A five-day shootout at Alex McSween’s
Still finds the Kid alive and free
The death of Chapman Billy did see
He said I will testify if you will pardon me
Lew Wallace granted the Kid’s request
He was brought to Lincoln under arrest
After awhile the Kid became disturbed
Afraid that Wallace wouldn’t keep his word
Kicking up dust on the trail from Lincoln County
Upon Billy’s head comes a $500 bounty
Dead or alive Billy the Kid must be found
And his long time friend the new sheriff in town
Pat Garrett would hold Billy up at Stinking Springs
He captured the outlaw and vows justice he’ll bring
William Bonney was sentenced to hang on the 13th day
In 1881 in the month of May
To the outhouse Billy did go
Where he got the gun no one will ever know
As he climbed the stairs, the legend would tell
He turned and with the pistol shot Deputy Bell
Back up to the room where he had been bound
With Ollinger’s 10-guage shotgun he looked around
From the window; all he said
Was “Hello Bob”! Then shot him dead
No lawman or jail would tie him down
He escapes again to ride out of town
Billy the Kid would stay on the run
Yet meet his fate, through the barrel of a gun
Pat Garrett and his men were lying low
Late one night in Fort Sumner, New Mexico
As Billy’s lone figure approached the Maxwell house
The deputies sat quite as a mouse
When he stepped upon the porch the deputies he would see
As he backed into the door he said, “who is it?” to Pete
Sheriff Pat Garrett was about 6’4
It was his bullet that left the Kid dead on the floor
They say he killed a man for every year of his life
He was good with a gun and good with a knife
William Bonney’s short life was violent and cruel
But he always lived by his own simple rules
Billy the Kid’s life will always be
Forever in our minds a mystery
Yet on and on it will go
The Mysterious legend of “El Chivato”
Virginia Clark
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Very good poem.
I totally like the scene where he kills Ollinger. Especially in Peckinpah verse:
"Keep the change, Bob."
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that does sound good
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I like your Kid drawing!
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