Long before the first Calgary Stampede, the city attracted a different type of cowboy.
Harry Longabaugh – better known as Sundance Kid — is perhaps best known for his daring bank and train robberies as part of Butch Cassidy's “The Wild Bunch.” But the American outlaw's brief stint as a cowboy and businessman in southern Alberta is a lesser-known chapter in the history of the Wild West.
According to records, the Sundance Kid spent about three years in Alberta. V early 1890s. He reportedly worked as a ranch hand in The U Ranch bar south of Longview opened a saloon in Calgary's Grand Central Hotel and was arrested by North West Mounted Police on suspicion of animal cruelty.
“It was an interlude in this itinerant way of life… wandering, ranching, cowboying, and occasionally robbing trains, banks, mines or whatever,” said American writer and researcher Daniel Buck.
Tank and his wife Anne Meadows, author of the book Butch and Sundance Digsstudied the criminal duo's time in South America. — including trying to solve the mystery whether they died or not in a 1908 skirmish with Bolivian cavalry — when they heard in passing that Kid had spent time in Canada.
Their studies in the early 1990s revealed everything from 1891 Alberta census records listing Longabaugh as a 25-year-old horse slaughterer at the Bar U Ranch, to a November 1901 Calgary Herald article mentioning that a “former Calgary resident” of the same name was wanted for murder in Texas.
Buck's findings surprised him because, although the Sundance Kid had already been widely written about in books and articles, Longabaugh's time in Canada had been largely ignored.
“The story of Sundance in Canada was unknown to people in the United States,” Buck said.
He and Meadows published their findings in the Winter 1993 issue of the Western Outlaw-Lawman History Association Journal.
Aside from being charged with animal cruelty in Calgary and having the charges dropped shortly thereafter (which Buck says he was likely framed for), the Kid has stayed out of trouble during his time north of the border.
What brought the Kid to Canada?
Much of Longabaugh's life is shrouded in mystery.
From his release from an 18-month prison sentence in Sundance, Wyoming, for theft in 1889 to his suspected involvement in a train robbery in 1892, there was virtually no trace of him in the States. Records of his time in Canada help fill these gaps.
Toronto Star crime reporter Peter Edwards, co-author Encyclopedia of Canadian Organized Crimesaid it was common for American criminals to come to Canada, noting that notorious gangster Al Capone rumor has it that he hid in Moose Jaw, Sask.
“The American authorities could not pursue them,” Edwards said.
Edwards said the Sundance Kid's journey took him as far as southern Saskatchewan, where he and his fellow outlaws fled the scene of their robberies and hid in places like Big Muddy and Big Beaver, just north of the border.
Longabaugh reportedly partnered with Frank Hamilton to open a salon in the recently demolished Grand Central Hotel in Calgary towards the end of his time in Alberta. Edwards said it was unlikely that the young cowboy would have earned enough money legally to make such an investment.
For Edwards, the Sundance Kid's ability to lead a double life north and south of the border—as a criminal in the States and a respectable worker in Canada—is astonishing.
“He had a separate life in Alberta,” he said. “He had a decent life, and sometimes he came there when there was a lot of heat in the States.”
Edwards said he will use multiple names.
Butch Cassidy did not work in Alberta like the Sundance Kid, but according to a 1970 Glenbow Journal article, he reportedly visited Longabaugh north of the border at least once in the early 1890s.
By all accounts, Longabaugh was a hard worker and a good cowboy.
How exactly did the Sundance Kid get involved in crime? — before and after his stay in Canada — remains a mystery to researchers like Buck.
“The vast majority of cowboys were not criminals,” he said. “It is difficult to explain why, among hundreds and hundreds of cowboys in the west, Sundance was one of the few who led such a wandering life as a cowboy and sometimes outlaw.”
According to Buck, it's probably all about the thrill, as well as the profitability of being a successful bank and train robber.
“The truth is, you'll die poor if you spend your life like a cowboy in those days,” he said.
After nearly a decade of robbery in the United States, the Sundance Kid fled to South America in the early 1900s with Butch Cassidy and his romantic partner Etta Place.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are believed to have died in Bolivia in 1908, although this claim is disputed. They say that this place disappeared without a trace.
As Vicki Kelly wrote in a 1970 issue of the Glenbow Journal: “Although such stories rarely involve Western Canada, the Sundance Kid's three years of peaceful residence in Alberta…provide an interesting connection to the American frontier.”
