Outlaws in Old Fort Collins
Men preparing the gallows.
(Editor’s Note: Fort Collins historian Wayne Sundberg wrote this story years ago.)
Shootouts, rustlings, lynchings, and bandits—were those really part of our early history?
According to local accounts, they were; and two names stand out: Musgrove and Happy Jack.
Happy Jack (no last name was reported) was the leader of a gang of horse thieves in northern Colorado. He stole livestock from ranches near Fort Collins in the early 1870s.
Sheriff Joe Mason arrested Happy Jack and some of his gang, and jailed them. Some armed citizen broke into the jail and took the outlaws away for a “necktie party.”
Ropes were thrown over some tree limbs. The owl hoots were hoisted aloft, kicking and dangling for several minutes. They were lowered back down, revived, and lectured, and then hoisted back up.
After the third raising, Happy Jack was left a little longer than the others “…in a most unhappy and unpleasant situation,” said historians. After he was lowered back and revived, they were turned loose with the admonition, “Get out of town and don’t come back.”
They must have gotten the word because the number of horse thefts dropped.
L. H. Musgrove and his gang were known for cattle rustling and stealing Army mules. When Musgrove “accidentally” shot Abner Loomis’s prize mule and tried to give him an Army mule in exchange, Loomis devised a plot to capture the outlaw.
He invited Musgrove in for a bite to eat. Just as he sat down, U.S. Marshall Haskell stepped from behind the door and threw down on Musgrove. He was handcuffed, tied to his horse, and quickly whisked off to Denver where, after a trial, he was hanged from the Cherry Creek Bridge.
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