After getting some much needed house cleaning done, the Bucakaroo, Heidi and I headed down town for the Gunfight Tour. Had a bunch of folks say they were gonna show up. As usual, when you get 100 people confirm, you're lucky iffn 3 showed up. Today it was just the one. But a very enjoyable one Alejandro Lomeli and his son. We'd traded messages back and forth concerning historic photos he's found here and there. I was hopin' to get some new photos for the web site, but the Heidi had used up the batteries in the camera Friday night.
Now today is a special day in El Paso's Old West heritage. It was this date in 1856 that the first recorded gunfight occurred. Ben Dowell had just opened the first American style saloon the previous year. In September of 1858, William McElroy, Jack Gordon, and several other men had broke into the customs house and cracked the safe, stealing the horses from Dowell's corral on the way out of town. To make the story short, McElroy and Gordon showed up in San Elizario the evening of the 6th, claiming they were going to murder Dowell the next day. Forewarned, Ben Dowell was waiting for them the morning of August 7th, and gunned down McElroy as he entered the saloon. The full story can be found at First Recorded Gunfight OldWestElPaso.Com.
Because of the housework, I didn't catch Leon Metz this morning with Bernie Sargent, but I did catch the very tail end of the Freddie Morales Show. I heard he is going to have a Sunset Heights Mexican Revolution tour coming up, $5.00 a head. I'll call him this week and find oout the details.
As always feed back is encouraged. I want the web site to become a community project, not just my ranting and ravings, that's what the blog is for
Until next time, keep you powder dry.
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