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Retro: Milton Sharp: Bandit

Photo: Title: “The Deadwood Coach” Side view of a stagecoach; formally dressed men sitting in and on top of coach. 1889. Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 #

We’ve all heard of the James Boys, the Dalton’s, Butch Cassidy the Sundance Kid & the Wild Bunch.  But what about Milton Sharp? He’s the Wells Fargo stage robber who never found an empty strongbox?  We can’t forget our outlaws. . . . EDITOR

from the Nevada Observer

[From Wells Drury, An Editor of the Comstock Lode (1935), pp. 252-263]
Nevada History:

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Milton Sharp, Bandit

Probably the most industrious highwayman in all of Nevada was Milton Anthony Sharp.

Sharp, in a modest way, did what he could to reduce the wealth of Wells, Fargo & Co. on the eastern slope of the Sierras about 1880. He robbed stages whenever he wanted to, and with great thoroughness, never making a mistake and never finding an empty treasure-box.

Gold bars from the Bodie mines were very numerous in those days, and nearly all of them were sold to the United States Mint at Carson City. Quite a lot of these yellow ingots failed to reach their destination, because Sharp stopped them on the way.

He was not averse to coin or greenbacks, either, but just took whatever came along. One haul of $13,000 in gold notes of Darius O. Mills’ Sacramento bank didn’t do him much good, however. He hid them under a pile of rocks and when he went to get them again they were gone. . . . Read Complete Report