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Posts published by “Malcolm Macdonald”

‘Goddamn It, Doc, Won’t You Ever Quit!’

By the end of the first week of December, 1879, all but one of the Mendocino Outlaws resided in jail or had been killed. The lone exception, Harrison Brown, escaped the fatal shootout at a…

Mendocino Outlaws: And Then There Was One

At dawn on Friday, December 5, 1879, Mendocino County Sheriff Jim Moore, Deputy Doc Standley, a stage driver, and twenty-one-year-old Clarence White surrounded a cabin a mile outside of the Butte County community of Nimshew.…

Mendocino Outlaws: Shootout at Nimshew

The posses chasing the Mendocino Outlaws rode, walked, and sometimes crawled over a thousand miles in pursuit of the killers of two men east of Mendocino on October 15, 1879. After crossing the Sacramento River…

Dr. Wheeler’s Criminal Past

From his cell within the Mendocino County Jail, Dr. John Wheeler told Ukiah City Press editor A.O. Carpenter that he was innocent of any connection to the ambush murder of two Mendocino City citizens in…

The Mendocino Outlaws: The Recapture of Dr. Wheeler

Dr. John F. Wheeler had been hiding in an abandoned cabin in Salt Hollow, a mile west of Cleveland's mill, for parts of two days and nights since his November 7, 1879, escape from the…

The Skunk Train and the Georgia-Pacific Mill Site

Here is the headline: Sierra Railroad, the parent company of the Skunk Train, is in negotiations to purchase more than 200 acres of the old Georgia-Pacific mill site in Fort Bragg. These negotiations have been…

The Mendocino Outlaws: Dr. Wheeler’s Escape

John Wheeler and James Anthony escaped from the county jail in Ukiah in the dinner hour of November 7, 1879. They employed a Babbitt metal key to unlock their cells and a door to the…

Pursuing the Mendo Outlaws on Two Fronts

The pursuit of the Mendocino Outlaws, wanted for the murder of two men, extended from October into November. The posse searched for the three remaining fugitives from the coast to the Eel River to Round…

Mendocino Outlaws: The Pursuit into Tehama County

That morning following the shootout at Rattlesnake Creek, Doc and Andy Bowman found the tracks of their prey's mounts on the hill to the east. They had gone but a quarter mile farther on the…

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