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, just south of Ten Sleep, Wyo., in the southern Big Horn Basin. The raiders killed three men—roasting two in their burning sheep wagon and shooting the third—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.
Defendants in the Spring Creek Raid case. Clockwise from top left: Herb Brink, Ed Eaton, George Saban, Tom Dixon, Milton Alexander. Washakie Museum photo.Sheep raids had plagued Wyoming since the late 1890s, by which time sheep outnumbered cattle on Wyoming ranges. By 1909, at least six men had been killed, thousands of sheep had been slaughtered and many thousands of dollars of property destroyed, and yet there had not been a single conviction for a crime committed during a sheep raid.
Cattlemen were first to arrive in the Big Horn Basin, trailing in huge herds of cattle in 1879. They insisted their early arrival established a prior claim to the grass on the government land where their herds grazed. But the law said otherwise. Under federal land law in the early 1900s, both sheepmen and cattlemen had equal rights to the resources of public land. It was first come, first served, and neither group could claim any right of continuing use.
But it’s no surprise, given the rising numbers of sheep on the range in those years, that cattlemen were feeling pressure. Sheep already outnumbered cattle in Wyoming by the early 1890s; in 1894 there were 1.7 million sheep in Wyoming and 675,000 cattle. By 1909, the state’s peak year for sheep, there were more than six million sheep, and only 675,000 cattle.
The response of the cattlemen was to use violence to enforce their claims of precedence, wreaking terrible damage upon sheepmen and their property in the process. As the violence worsened, sheepmen determined to put a stop to the cattlemen’s vigilante behavior. In 1905, Wyoming sheep raisers formed the Wyoming Wool Growers Association, which made crucial contributions to the 1909 prosecution of the men who carried out the Spring Creek Raid.
Big Horn County, where Spring Creek was located, used money forwarded by the association to hire attorneys, cover the costs of trial and pay for essential actions such as concealing witnesses for their own protection and for the protection of the case. And the sheepmen contributed the services of their crack range detective, Joe LeFors, by then well known for his role in the conviction of Tom Horn, the notorious range detective executed for murder in 1903.
Big Horn County officials began an aggressive investigation of the Spring Creek Raid and quickly developed a list of suspects. A grand jury followed, forcing 100 people to testify in Basin City, the county seat. The testimony established solid evidence showing the complicity of seven men, all of whom were charged with murder and arson. After the arrests and jailing of these defendants, two of them turned state’s evidence, opening the secrets of the raiders to the prosecutors. The prosecution, it seemed, had put together an almost invincible case.
The two ranchers, two cowboys and a former cowboy waiting in the Big Horn County jail–George Saban, Milton Alexander, Tommy Dixon, Herb Brink and Ed Eaton–were confident that the cases against them would not even go to trial, and they would soon be released. All knew the dismal Wyoming history of the prosecution of sheep raiders. They also knew of other disastrous attempts to prosecute men engaged in extralegal activities. Those included the abortive attempt to bring to justice the invaders in the 1892 Johnson County War, wherein the governor of Wyoming was a secret supporter of big cattlemen. That case never came to trial, as Johnson County prosecutors were unable to seat 12 acceptable jurors.
The men jailed in Big Horn County were personally aware of the unsuccessful prosecution of the perpetrators of a July 1903 raid on the county jail in which two prisoners and a deputy sheriff were killed. That conflict was led by George Saban, the same man who was one of the leaders of the Spring Creek Raid. The 1903 case against him and his confederates had collapsed in an atmosphere of intimidation.
