On January 1, 1885 Wells, Fargo & Company's chief detective James B. Hume and special agent John N. Thacker published a report of the company's losses over the previous 14 years. The report gave a listing of crimes and a detailed description of 188 road agents [18 had died and were not described]. But the report had another purpose, to provide lawmen throughout the west with a textual “mug book” of potentially recidivist road agents who might again victimize the company. This report had inconsistencies in formatting and errors of fact, some critical, but lacked details of the thrilling robberies; the pursuits, arrests, and trials; the convictions and prison terms. The 125th Anniversary edition corrects these shortcomings. It gives the details of over 400 stagecoach and train robberies and a few burglaries where Wells, Fargo treasure boxes held the plunder. These events take place in a half dozen wild west states and territories, focusing mainly on California where the company had its main office and conducted the greater part of its business.

In January 1, 1885, Wells, Fargo & Company's chief detective James B. Hume and special agent John N. Thacker published a report summarizing the company's losses during the previous 14 years. It listed 313 stagecoach robberies, 23 burglaries, and four train robberies but included little or no details of the events themselves, focusing instead on physical descriptions of the robbers. Widely circulated, the report was intended to assist law enforcement in identifying and apprehending the criminals believed still to present a danger to the company. The present volume revisits each crime, updating Hume and Thacker's original report with rich new details culled from local newspapers, personal diary entries, and court records.

[Both novelette and screenplay are included] Black Bart, the West’s premier highwayman, alias Charles Bolton, T.Z. Spaulding, and others, made at least 28 hold-up’s in eight years. Middle-aged, always on foot, and mostly with unloaded shotguns, he taunted the fabled Wells Fargo Express Company with doggerel signed Black Bart, The P o 8 (Poet). Resourceful and usually polite, he never robbed passengers. Freed from prison, he vanished. Based on a recently-found manuscript, the mystery of what happened is solved. Punster Bart, cloaked in more aliases, and malaprop Mad Molly Moon roam the Sierra Nevada’s, meeting a host of characters including Colonel Ord Vivian, henchman Tiberius Bing, murderous Ben Bubbs, and the intrepid John Muir. The year is 1888. Do enter.

From 1860 to 1900, many towns in Nevada sprang up to serve the mining camps in the area. These towns provided the breeding ground for a unique character known as "the mining camp gunman." This book delves into the violent and gritty lives of various Nevada characters, including gunfighting miner Dick Prentice, lawman and politico Leslie Blackburn, peace officer William McKee, ruthless killer Hank Parrish, outlaw escape artist John Burke and other characters.

The people who pushed west were mostly ordinary folks, the guts of the young United States, tough, ambitious, hardworking, and anxious to leave the world better for their kids than it had been for them. Those who did not come of that hardy stock did not last. With them came the trouble-makers, to everybody’s sorrow. Some of them were already running from the law someplace else. Others were simply dishonest, looking for a time and place to blossom into full-blown hoodlums. Some of the young people emulated them: there was some illusory swagger in being a hoodlum, witness the nicknames they carried around . . . many of which they had invented themselves, a sort of phony glory. This collection of short, action-filled stories of the Old West’s most egregiously bad bad guys caught in the act of mayhem, distraction, murder, and highway robbery, includes famous names like the Dalton gang, lesser known bandits like Kaiser Bill Goodman, and many more. The book will include archival illustrations and photographs of the shady characters and the scenes of their crimes.