Doc Holliday and Kid Curry

Definitely on the list of top five favorite places to park and go on different adventures: the rest area at exit 121 on Interstate 70 in Colorado.

 The trail head for Grizzly Creek is right at the rest area, and there is a bike path that follows the interstate along the north bank of the Colorado River through Glenwood Canyon. It is a six mile ride from the rest area to Glenwood Springs colorado, elevation 5900+ feet. 

Glenwood Springs is an ancient place of interest. The natural hot springs here drew early inhabitants where the Roaring Fork River meets the Colorado. When it was little more Then a camp town of bandits miners gunslingers and prostitutes Doc Holliday came here at the end of his life, seeking relief from the suffering of tuberculosis. He died here and is rumored to be buried in the pioneer cemetery on a bluff overlooking the town.

R. JOHN HENRY HOLLIDAY

8-14-1851 to 11-8-1887

Doc was a dentist whom necessity had made a gambler; a gentleman whom disease had made a vagabond; a philosopher whom life had made a caustic wit; a long, lean ash- bd fellow nearly dead with consumption, and at the same time the most skillful gambler and the nerviest, speediest, deadliest man with a six-gun I ever knew." -Wyatt Earp

There is some dispute as to whether he was really buried here or in an unmarked grave in Griffin Georgia where he's from... I guess I will have to make a pilgrimage there to check it out.

The railroad goes right through here bringing people to the resort, Which is why butch cassidy and his wild bunch gang held up the train. Kid Curry was killed in that heist. I love the description and the historical marker near his grave in the potter's field:

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Kid Curry

Darkness had fallen on the rainy night of June 7, 1904 when an unwanted passenger hopped the No. 5 Denver and Rio Grande train near Parachute, Colorado, about 45 miles west of Glenwood Springs. A gun-toting bandit with his face blackened ordered the engineer to uncouple all of the train cars except the engine and the express car and to stop a couple of miles west of town where two more robbers boarded the train. The safes in the express car were dynamited and the thieves left with an undisclosed amount of money. They rowed a boat across the Grand (Colorado) River to the south where horses were hitched and started their getaway to the southeast.

Two days later, with a posse on their trail, the robbers demanded breakfast and fresh horses from the Banta Ranch. What the outlaws didn't know was that the Bantas had a telephone and were able to alert the neighborhood. The posse cornered the group on East Divide Creek and a shootout ensued. One of the robbers was severely wounded and declaring that he was "done for," took his own life. His two companions escaped.

The dead man's body was brought to Glenwood Springs, photographs were taken and he was buried in the Potter's Field section of Linwood Cemetery under the name J.H. Ross, an alias he had used to obtain a job a few days prior on the railroad crew. Pinkerton detective, Loweli Spence, who was very familiar with the unlawful exploits of Kid Curry, identified the robber by the death photo as Harvey Logan, alias "Kid Curry." Spence had been tracking Curry since his escape from jail in Knoxville, Tennessee the previous year. As additional proof, Spence asked that the body be exhumed and examined by a doctor for any scars or other telltale features. Dr. McAlister, a physician for the Glenwood Hot Springs Company. performed the examination and indicated, "His whole appearance marks him as a moral coward...every line in his face indicates a degenerate."

Dr. McAlister gave his detailed report to the Pinkertons who decided, in one last effort to prove their case, to come to Glenwood Springs and take a look for themselves. Detective Spence ordered the body dug up a second time and after seeing the man for himself, declared that he was indeed Harvey Logan. Spence had spent considerable time with Logan during the trial in Knoxville, seeing him every day for weeks, and felt confident that the dead outlaw was him. With reward money in the balance, not all law enforcement officials agreed with Spence's conclusion, leading to doubt and speculation that lingers even today. However, most historians agree, due to the fact that Logan never surfaced again, that Linwood Cemetery is the final chapter in the Kid Curry saga.

As there was no headstone for Logan, the Frontier Historical Society, along with the City of Glenwood Springs, installed this marble headstone in Potter's Field in 2009.

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You have to dress like a bandit out west:

 Sun. Flies. Blades of grass are dangerous weapons