America's Western Frontier was officially declared closed by the US Government in 1890. However, it can be plausibly argued that the Old West, the nation’s final frontier where law and order were often home-spun enterprises, died with the execution of Tom Horn in Cheyenne, Wyoming on November 20, 1903. Tom was sentenced to death for the murder of a fourteen-year-old boy. At the time, he was working as an assassin for the local cattlemen attempting to enforce their control of the open range of southeastern Wyoming against the growing number of rustlers and sheep headers in the area.
The American West in 1903
Tom Horn had made his way from his birthplace in Missouri to the wilds of the Southwest in 1876, when was sixteen. He soon found employment as a scout with the U.S. Cavalry and took part in the search for the Apache Chief Geronimo. It was during this period that he perfected his skills with firearms and tracking. By 1887 Tom was out of the Army and a participant in in the Arizona Territory’s Pleasant Valley War: a feud between two families (the Grahams and the Tewksburys) that began in 1882 and lasted over ten years. By 1890, Tom was in the employ of the Pinkerton Detective Agency and tasked with tracking and finding various suspected lawbreakers. He was quite proficient at this, however, he lost his job because, more often than not, his targets were dispatched on the spot instead of returned to the courts for justice.
