The Last Train Robbery

The railroads changed everything. Before the tracks stretched across Arizona Territory, travel was a grueling, often dangerous affair. Roads were little more than dusty trails, and getting from one town to another required weeks of horseback riding or days in a bone-jarring stagecoach. Then came the Southern Pacific Railroad, cutting through the deserts and mountains like a steel artery, bringing life, commerce, and civilization—or at least a rough approximation of it—to places that had previously been nothing more than clusters of adobe buildings and saloons. The town of Fairbank, located just west of the legendary silver boomtown of Tombstone, owed its very existence to the railroad. While Tombstone had the glitz, the gamblers, and the gunfights, Fairbank had the station. It was the final stop before one entered the bustling mining metropolis, making it a natural hub for goods and gold shipments. By 1900, the railroad had become the lifeline of the West, but with prosperity came predators.

Burt Alvord and Billy Stiles were the sort of men who straddled the line between law and crime, often without a clear understanding of which side they were supposed to be on. Alvord had been a lawman for years, a deputy sheriff with a reputation for toughness, though not necessarily brilliance. Born in California and raised in the boomtowns of Arizona, he was well acquainted with the outlaw lifestyle. Stiles, younger and perhaps more reckless, had started his career in a similar way, working under seasoned lawmen like Jeff Milton and John Slaughter. At some point, both men decided that the money was better on the other side of the badge. While still serving as deputy sheriffs, they began organizing train robberies, using their positions to shield themselves from suspicion and throw off investigations. The Southern Pacific Railroad, ever a target for outlaws, became their primary victim.

The plan for the Fairbank train robbery was simple in concept but doomed in execution. Alvord and Stiles had orchestrated a number of heists before, but this time they sought to distance themselves from the actual crime. Instead of robbing the train themselves, they recruited five lesser-known outlaws: “Bravo Juan” Tom Yoas, Bob Brown (sometimes referred to as Bob Burns), brothers George and Louis Owens, and “Three Fingered Jack” Dunlop. The gang believed the express car, which routinely carried money and gold shipments, would be easy pickings, especially since they had insider knowledge of the train schedules. The key to their success, they thought, was timing. They chose February 15, 1900, under the assumption that Jeff Milton—an experienced gunman and express messenger for Wells Fargo—would not be on duty. But fate has a way of throwing wrenches into the best-laid plans. The scheduled messenger fell ill, and Milton took his place.

That evening, Fairbank’s train platform was as lively as ever. The town’s residents enjoyed gathering at the station to watch the trains come and go, getting a glimpse of the world beyond their dusty town. The gang members blended in with the crowd, pretending to be drunk and disorderly cowboys. Their plan was to strike as the train came to a stop, overwhelming the guard and making off with the cash before anyone could react. But Milton was no ordinary guard.

As the train pulled in and the steam hissed from its valves, Milton slid open the freight car door. A voice rang out: “Put your hands up!” At first, Milton thought it was a joke, but when the next sound was the crack of a rifle shot that sent his hat flying, he realized the gravity of the situation. He reached for his revolver, only to remember it was on the desk behind him. What he did have, however, was his Winchester Model 1887 shotgun. Unfortunately, the outlaws had positioned themselves behind human shields, using bystanders as cover. As Milton hesitated, weighing his options, the next bullet tore through his left arm, shattering the bone.

Despite the pain, Milton was not out of the fight. He staggered but managed to grab his shotgun and fire. The first blast caught “Three Fingered Jack” Dunlop square in the chest, sending him tumbling to the ground. A stray pellet hit Yoas in the leg. As the other outlaws opened fire on the express car, Milton managed to slam the door shut, lock the safe, and toss the key into a pile of freight, ensuring that even if they got inside, they wouldn’t be able to access the money. Then he collapsed, bleeding out on the floor.

The outlaws, believing Milton to be dead, scrambled to ransack the express car but found themselves empty-handed. With time running out and a crowd beginning to form, they grabbed what little money they could—a mere seventeen Mexican pesos—and fled. They loaded the wounded Dunlop onto a horse and rode out of town, their grand heist reduced to a disaster.

Word of the robbery spread instantly. Sheriff Scott White and his posse wasted no time in giving chase. The outlaws split up, hoping to evade capture, but the desert had a way of swallowing men whole, leaving only dust and regret. Three Fingered Jack, barely clinging to life, was abandoned along the trail with a bottle of whiskey. When White’s posse found him, he was in no condition to put up a fight. They took him to Tombstone, where he died of his wounds. The Owens brothers and Bob Brown were captured soon after while attempting to cross the Dragoons. Yoas was found hiding in Cananea, Mexico.

Back in Fairbank, Milton, miraculously alive, was rushed to a doctor. Though he survived, his left arm was permanently crippled. In the days following the robbery, suspicion began to swirl around Alvord and Stiles. Their relentless pursuit of the bandits seemed a little too theatrical, their claims of innocence too well-rehearsed. Then Stiles, perhaps motivated by resentment over his share of previous robberies, turned informant. He confessed that not only had Alvord planned the Fairbank heist, but the two had also masterminded the Cochise train robbery months earlier. The jig was up.

Alvord was arrested but didn’t stay behind bars for long. On April 7, 1900, Stiles stormed the jail in Tombstone, shooting Deputy Marshal George Bravin in the foot and setting Alvord free. The two men vanished into the desert. They spent the next few years playing a cat-and-mouse game with law enforcement, alternating between banditry and working with the Arizona Rangers to capture other criminals. Alvord was eventually caught in Mexico in 1904 and sentenced to time in Yuma Territorial Prison. After his release, he disappeared, reportedly heading to Central America. Stiles, under the alias William Larkin, briefly found work as a deputy sheriff in Nevada before meeting his end in 1908 during an attempted arrest.

The Fairbank train robbery was, in many ways, the last gasp of the Old West. The frontier was closing, and with it, the days of the outlaw. Railroads had brought order, telegraphs had made escape more difficult, and lawmen like Jeff Milton had proven that the days of easy scores were numbered. Milton himself became a legend, a man who had stared down death and refused to blink. The robbers, by contrast, became footnotes in history, men whose grand ambitions crumbled in the face of bad luck, poor planning, and the unbreakable will of one wounded express messenger. In the end, the Fairbank train robbery wasn’t just a failed heist—it was a symbol of an era coming to an end.