Black Bart Inn
Image by www78
Between 1875 and 1883, a string of 28 stagecoach robberies hit the Wells Fargo Bank between California and Southern Oregon. Known as "Black Bart" after some poetry left by the "po8", the robber, wearing a duster and bowler, covered in a flour bag with holes cut into it, and armed with a shotgun and apparently in command of a large gang, would appear at a bend or hill on a well-traveled route, politely ask the driver for the strongbox, and then flee on foot, making off with thousands of dollars a year. Dime store novels exploded with lurid stories of the brutal outlaw who robbed at will, cementing his legend into the story of the American West. Black Bart was finally caught in 1883 after robbing his final stagecoach near Funk Hill (Copperopolis), ironically the site of his first robbery. A hunter scheduled to be picked up by the stagecoach came upon Black Bart robbing his ride and fired at the outlaw, wounding him in the hand. His gun was found to be unloaded. Wells Fargo investigator James Hume searching the scene later came upon a handkerchief labeled "F.X.0.7", which was traced all the way to a laundromat in San Francisco, who identified the culprit: Charles Bowles/Bolton, a dapper, well-off gentleman who claimed he was a mining engineer.
Bowles was an Englishman who had visited the California gold fields multiple times (and failed to hit it rich) fought in the American Civil War, and then left his wife and children (who thought he was dead) to go to California. Bowles was brought to the Calaveras County Courthouse, where he confessed to the final robbery and was sentenced to six years in San Quentin Prison. He got off in four years for good behavior, renounced crime (after a journalist asked whether he would continue writing poems his reply was "Now, didn’t you hear me say that I am through with crime?") and disappeared as mysteriously as he appeared, vanishing after visiting a hotel in Visalia. Legend has it that Wells Fargo pensioned off the bandit to never show up again, though the bank has always denied it.
Black Bart Inn was rumored to be one of the locations the outlaw stayed when he was robbing stagecoaches in Gold Country. Bowles definitely was in the area, as his trial was just across the street.
San Andreas, California
