ARIZONIQUES

A Guide to Places, Events, and People Black Jack and the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang in Kingman

Black Jack Ketchum, sometime leader of the infamous Hole-in-theWall Gang, often hid out in Mohave County. Historian B. D. Titsworth writes that Black Jack and the outlaw gang first achieved notoriety in August, 1886, when they robbed a store and killed a man near Kingman, Arizona. Old-timer Sadie Pearl Duncan, daughter-in-law of Tap Duncan, remembers hearing stories about Black Jack hiding out and visiting friends down on the Big Sandy River.

Unique to Arizona and the Southwest. ARIZONIQUES Floyd Cisney The Hot Car King

The national all-time record for stolen car arrests is held by the late Floyd Cisney of Kingman. A highway patrolman for 21 years, sheriff of Mohave County for 9 years, and a deputy U. S. marshal until his death in 1985, Floyd arrested nearly 4,000 alleged car thieves. Nearly threequarters of them were convicted. Floyd revealed in an interview just before he died that in his 47 years of continuous service, he only had to pull his gun once. And even then he just shot the desperado in the hand.

Tap Duncan: A Rootin', Tootin', Pool Shootin' Kingman Cowboy

Known as the last two-gun man in Mohave County, George (Tap) Duncan was a cattle baron with a 1,450,000-acre ranch called the Diamond Bar. Old-timer Les Ruston summed up Tap's reputation when he said, "He was the best gunslinger in the state of Arizona. If you monkeyed with him, you were monkeying with a rattlesnake. I've seen him tried out several times." Louis L'Amour, the prolific writer of Western sagas, once admitted that Tap Duncan taught him everything he knew about cowboying. The late Dick Waters, longtime Kingman resident and newspaperman, always enjoyed telling this tale about Tap and his cowboys: "After they had driven a herd of cattle to the railhead in Hackberry, Tap and his men went into a saloon and got into a game of billiards. But after a game or two, Tap got bored with the pace, pulled his six-shooter, and started shooting the balls into the pockets." No doubt, the game speeded up quite a bit. Ironically, after surviving numerous "close scrapes" and living a long and exciting life, Tap Duncan was struck down by a car while walking in downtown Kingman. He died on November 14, 1944, at the age of 75.

in the state of Arizona. If you monkeyed with him, you were monkeying with a rattlesnake. I've seen him tried out several times." Louis L'Amour, the prolific writer of Western sagas, once admitted that Tap Duncan taught him everything he knew about cowboying. The late Dick Waters, longtime Kingman resident and newspaperman, always enjoyed telling this tale about Tap and his cowboys: "After they had driven a herd of cattle to the railhead in Hackberry, Tap and his men went into a saloon and got into a game of billiards. But after a game or two, Tap got bored with the pace, pulled his six-shooter, and started shooting the balls into the pockets." No doubt, the game speeded up quite a bit. Ironically, after surviving numerous "close scrapes" and living a long and exciting life, Tap Duncan was struck down by a car while walking in downtown Kingman. He died on November 14, 1944, at the age of 75.

Snowbird with a Six-Gun Winter Visitor Wyatt Earp

The legendary Lion of Tombstone, Wyatt Earp, was no stranger to Mohave County. In his later years (1903-1921), he made his headquarters in Los Angeles, but almost every year he wintered west of Parker, Arizona, where he had a mining claim. Although best known as a gunfighter and gambler, Wyatt Earp always considered himself something of a prospector and had many miner friends. John Gilchrease, a Western historian and Wyatt Earp expert, has documented Earp's visits to old cronies in the Mohave County mining camps of Oatman, Mineral Park, Chloride, and White Hills. No doubt the inveterate gambler indulged in a few games of chance on his many visits.

Mohave County, 1874 No Place for a Honeymoon

Martha Summerhayes, a young woman from the East, newly married and accompanying her U.S. Army officer husband on his tour of duty in Arizona Territory, traveled with the troops from Fort Mojave (just below present-day Bullhead City) to Camp Apache, on the White River (see page 9). From her book Vanished Arizona: "At break of day the command marched out, their rifles on their shoulders, swaying along ahead of us, in the sunlight and the heat, which continued still to be almost unendurable. The dry white dust of this desert country boiled and surged up and around us in suffocating clouds." Martha rode in an ambulance. West of present-day Kingman, she details another incident: the suicide of Major Worth's pet dog, Pete. "Having exhausted his ability to endure [the heat), this beautiful red setter fixed his eye upon a distant range of mountains, and ran without turning, or heeding any call, straight as the crow flies, towards them and death. We never saw him again." Despite this poor first impression of the area and the fact that their route lay over "the dreariest and most desolate country," she later concluded: "I did not dream of the power of the desert, nor that I should ever long to see it again. But as I write, the longing possesses me, and the pictures...unfold themselves like a panorama before my vision and call me to come back, to look upon them once more." She is not alone. In the end, the desert has captured us all.