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John W. Davis

John Davis has practiced law in Worland, Wyo., since 1973. In addition to Wyoming Range War, he has written A Vast Amount of Trouble, which chronicles the 1909 Spring Creek Raid, and Goodbye, Judge Lynch, which looks at the vexing troubles with vigilantism in Wyoming in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The Spring Creek Raid: The Last Murderous Sheep Raid in the Big Horn Basin

On April 2, 1909, seven cowmen attacked a sheep camp near Spring Creek in the southern Big Horn Basin. The raiders killed three men, kidnapped two others, killed sheep dogs and dozens of sheep and destroyed thousands of dollars of personal property. It was the deadliest sheep raid in Wyoming history. Unlike many previous incidents after which raiders went unpunished, however, prosecutors this time were successful and five raiders were jailed, marking the end of 15 years or more of violence between cattle- and sheepmen.

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Essay : November 20, 2011 - 12:10am

The Johnson County War: 1892 Invasion of Northern Wyoming

In April 1892, a private army of 52 cattle barons, their employees and hired Texas guns invaded Johnson County in northern Wyoming, intending to kill as many as 70 men they suspected of being rustlers or rustler sympathizers. The invaders managed to kill two men before word got out, and they were surrounded by an angry posse. Troops from nearby Fort McKinney intervened. The invaders were escorted back to Cheyenne, where they were charged but never brought to trial. The event ended in ambiguity and political division in the new state of Wyoming.

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Essay : July 10, 2011 - 5:55pm