Customer Reviews

Black Bart: Boulevardier Bandit: The Saga of California's Most Mysterious Stagecoach Robber and the Men Who Sought to Capture Him

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A fascinating book, which neither idolized Black Bart, or demonizes him either. Hoeper has really done his research. I never knew the full story about Black Bart before. This story fills in lots of the gaps that people don't know.

The only complaint I had was that at the end, Hoeper's "new evidence" that Black Bart died in Nevada is nothing more than a mild... "It might have been him." I expected some evidence. To this day, nobody REALLY knows what happened to Bart after he got out of prison.

Other than a mild letdown at the end, I still HIGHLY reccommend this book. A fascinating story of one of the Old West's most "larger than life" characters.

This biography is well written, good bedtime reading. It answered many of my questions about Black Bart. My only reservation is that it left out a few details, such as the gold he was supposed to have stashed in an oak tree in Petaluma, or how he developed such a hatred of Wells Fargo in the first place. Not mentioned is the report in the Alta California that he was later arrested in Kansas for stage robbing, under another name. Was it really him, or not? The mysteries remain after more than a hundred years. Readers looking for a more scholarly approach should seek elsewhere.

"Lawmen of the gold rush days,like the outlaws they pursued were tough hombres.They were advocates of "justice,swift and sure."
This is an excellent account of a period during the Old West,but described in quite a different way from what fans of "westerns" have
become accustomed to reading. I am a big fan of the Longarm ,Trailsman ,Gunsmith,Slocum,Lone Star,Stagecoach and other series;but this book is much more of a real history written about a real character and his exploits of robbing stages in California during the period of July 26,1875 and November 3,1883.
It gives the account of one person ,"Black Bart" and his ,at least 28 stagecoach robbings.It does not have all the fast action,shootouts,trackdowns by a possee or super Lawman that is typical of the novels that Ned Buntline has been given credit for with his "dime Novels"written at the time ,or even the "western" series I mentioned before.
This is a well researched history by a writer who spent his career writing for newspapers and historical publications and retired in 1995.He has set out to research a widely known character of whom much has been written;but abounds in fiction ,legend,embellishments ,and all sorts of stories. He has set the record straight;at least as far as he has been able to.
In "westerns", we see some greater than life characters;but with "Black Bart" we have a character that is really and truly greater than life and needs no embellishment.
The fact that he carried out all these holdouts,alone,without ever firing a shot,in fact his weapons were not even loaded,nobody was ever able to figure out even who he was,never hurt or robbed a passenger,is simply a story which fits the description of "truth being stranger than fiction".In fact, in the final analysis,very little was really ever known for sure about this amazing character.
Along with Black Bart and his stage robbings;we get a wonderful true insight into the everyday life of running stage lines,life on the roads in gold rush days, and how the law worked at the time .We see the real way things worked with the Wells Fargo company,how they treated their employees,how they looked at the law,and how they really dealt with crimes against them.We also get a pretty fair appreciation of how the public looked upon Wells Fargo and particularly how other owners and drivers looked upon them.
One thing that comes through during all these robberies is how adept Black Bart was at travelling around the state,camping out and basically without any equipment or food,and covering great distances,mostly on foot and in remarkably short times. I have read most of Johm Muir's works and for anyone interested,he travelled around the state ,several weeks at a time,dressed in ordinary clothes,no "camping gear",little food except some bread and a pocket full of tea,and lived off the land;much as did Black Bart".The big difference is that Muir did it solely to study nature and the landscape.
This book was first published in 1995,a year after the author published "Bacon and Beans from a Gold Pan" in 1994,about gold panning during the depression.I have not read it ,but plan to as ,and if it is as well researched as "Black Bart " was;it should be very interesting.
It is hard to imagine any other "outlaw" giving the establishment so much consternation over so little in the way of actual losses;and one can only imagine that robbing Wells Fargo stages was more of an obsession that drove Black Bart, than any riches he ever received from his exploits. This is the kind of thing that creates "folk heros" and drive the law and establishment mad.

Written by former reporter George Hoeper, Black Bart: Boulevardier Bandit is an amazing biography of one of California's most colorful historical figures. For over eight years, the indubitably polite and genteel criminal Charles Boles (alias Black Bart) preyed upon Wells Fargo & Co., enacting at least 28 stagecoach robberies - always on foot with an unloaded shotgun, and never demanding money from stagecoach passengers or drivers. Folk legends sprung up about Black Bart, who lived the life of a boulevardier in San Francisco, hobnobbing with the city's upper crust and writing poetry. In 1888, Black Bart disappeared from the Palace Hotel in Visalia, never to be seen again; Black Bart: Boulevardier Bandit offers information to suggest that Black Bart's final fate was not to settle in some distant land, but rather to lose his life in the dry Nevada wasteland and rest in an unmarked grave. "Black Bart may have been remorseful about not returning to his family, but if he was remorseful about turning to a life of crime, he never expressed it... It seemed, when questioned by reporters on the possibility of returning to his old ways, that his decision to abandon crime was based more on the fear of being caught again than on his rehabilitation and sorrow for his sins of the past." An extensively researched biography, enthusiastically recommended for anyone curious about one of California's most famous career criminals.

The book was well researched and well written. It provided good information that was used in "Black Bart Days" that was held on June 23 & 24th in Sutter Creek, California. I knew George Hoeper. He was an excellent historian and writer.