The rhyme and reason of George Pike’s life involved stealing horses, rustling cows on occasion and helping the Converse County sheriff get silver stolen from a safe back to its rightful owner.
He and a buddy are said to have robbed a saloon and returned a short time later to buy everyone a few rounds.
And two years after he died a respected Converse County rancher and friend bought him an expensive headstone with a poem engraved on it written by a Denver journalist as a final salute.
He even earned a spot on the shelf in the Wyoming Pioneer Museum in Douglas.
“George Pike was a well-known and well-liked horse thief,” the museum display reads. “Pike came to Douglas when it was a tent town called Antelope in 1885. Pike was a gambler and a con man.”
And a wannabe boxer.
No stranger to courtrooms or bar rooms, one of the first mentions of his name in local newspapers was as pugilist on a pre-card matchup of the main fight in the Arlington Saloon on Feb. 16, 1887, in Bill Barlow’s Budget, a newspaper that covered Converse County.
“The main contest was preceded by a series of three-round scraps between Jerry Binkley and George Pike …..,” the newspaper reported, going on to name the other pugilists. There is no report about who won his match.
Charged With Assault
Two years later, the Budget reported on April 10, 1889, that Pike was in court charged with an assault on a man named Thomas Martin. He pleaded guilty and was fined $10 and court costs. Another charge of carrying a concealed weapon and “flourishing the same in a violent and dangerous matter” led to a $5 fine and costs.
Accounts have Pike born in 1855 or possibly later in LeClaire, Iowa. When he arrived in Converse County, he eventually homesteaded a ranch on Bear Creek, northwest of Douglas. Another homesteader, Curtis Sears, was a neighbor who owned the EB Ranch. Sears imported horses from England. Together they would try and sometimes advance their standard of living by other than lawful means.
In an article in Converse County’s Past written by a nephew of Sear’s wife, Warren Grove, Grove wrote that Pike and Sears enjoyed drinking and gambling and both men were not averse to finding other ranches’ unbranded cattle in the spring and branding them as their own.
Both men opposed the large ranches in the region such as the CY, Goose Egg, and Fiddleback. Those ranches imported purebred bulls as a means to increase the quality of their cattle. So, Sears and Pike would use the bulls with their own herds, while branding any unbranded cattle.
On another occasion, U.S. Army soldiers were passing through the Bear Creek area on a mission. They turned their horses and mules loose to graze. The next morning, most of their animals were missing and they were forced to stay and hunt for them. A reward was offered for the missing animals.
Pike and Sears appeared at the camp at daybreak a day or so after the reward was posted with the animals. They left with the $500 reward.
Saloon Visit
Another story in Converse County’s Past has the pair riding the range around Gillette seeking unbranded calves. One night they rode into town and tied their horses to the hitching post at the saloon. The town was small with just a saloon, store, livery stable and a few residences.
Grove wrote that the men asked for a drink at the bar and then after downing them decided to take their horses to the livery stable. Shortly after that, two masked men appeared in the saloon, one entering the front door, the other the rear. They demanded the cash out of the till. The men left.
“Soon afterward, Curtis and George reentered the saloon, excited about hearing of the daring holdup,” Grove wrote. “After some speculation, Curtis and Pike ordered free drinks for the house, for which they paid cash. When the two left Gillette the following morning, the saloon keeper had as much in the till as he had before the robbery, but his liquor supply was depleted.”
In 1893, Bill Barlow’s Budget reported Pike and buddy Sears were pursuing wild horses that roamed near the head of Salt and Coal creeks northwest of Douglas. They captured 13 of a band of 26.
“All are full-grown unbranded stock and as wild as deer. Some were exceptionally fine animals,” the newspaper said.
In 1897, Pike made the news when one of the stallions he was trying to separate from a herd, turned and bit his wrist, dragged him off his horse and drug him on the ground before letting him go. He rode into Douglas for medical care and lost the use of the wrist for a few weeks.
Businessman And Defendant
On April 18, 1900, both Sears and Pike characterized as “two Bear Creek pioneers and ‘hoss’ men” were reported in Douglas on “land office business.”
In August 1902, Pike was reported to have sold a train-car load of cattle for the Omaha market. In October he shipped three train-car loads of horses.
Pike was often in court, mostly as a defendant.
The Wyoming Semi-Weekly Tribune in Cheyenne reported on April 26, 1904, that “the jury in the case of George Pike, charged with robbery, on the second trial brought in a verdict of not guilty.”
Some accounts of Pike’s life have him never losing as a defendant, but newspaper stories dispute that. He also was alleged to have sued an accused horse thief, lost the case due to his own reputation with horse stealing, and vowed to become a better man. That story could not be confirmed by available newspaper accounts.
Pike’s court disappearances also proved a problem to local bondsmen.
“District Court for Converse County convened at 10 o’clock yesterday for the spring term … The bond of George Pike was declared forfeited in the amount of $500 which Messers. William Albaugh and H. P. Allen, his sureties, will be called upon to pay,” Bill Barlow’s Budget reported on April 5, 1905.
In 2024, that $500 from 1905 would be worth nearly $18,000 when accounting for inflation.
A month later on May 4, 1905, the Converse County Herald published a notice from Sheriff Charles Messenger that, by Converse County District Court orders, he was selling 50 head of Pike’s cattle to satisfy a judgment against him that resulted from a lawsuit by a Pauline Bolin. Pike owned $477.70 and costs.
George Pike’s gravestone rests in Douglas’ Park Cemetery, a tribute from rancher and friend Lee Moore. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily) 
The Natrona County Tribune carried a short paragraph marking the death of George Pike in its Sept. 27, 1906 edition. (Newspapers.com) 
Left, George Pike fought in a saloon as part of boxing event in February 1887 as recorded in Bill Barlow’s Budget. Center, Pike assisted Converse County Sheriff Josiah Hazen in September 1898 in bringing loot back from a safe cracking robbery. Right, the April 10, 1889 Bill Barlow’s Budget newpaper carried a story of George Pike being arraigned on assault charges. (Wyomingnewspapers.com)
Sheriff’s Assistant
But Pike was not always on the wrong side the law. A few years earlier he rode with then Sheriff Josiah Hazen to find and regain loot that was stolen from a safe of a Converse County business.
Two thieves named Jim Dale and Ed Mewis cracked the Daniels & Newsom safe — a store dealing in wine, liquor, and cigars — and pleaded guilty to the crime. Mewis got one year and Dale four years in the state pen.
“Sheriff Hazen, accompanied by George Pike, returned from the north on Friday, they brought with them a sack containing $295 in silver, a gold watch, all the plunder of the recent safe breaking of Daniels & Newsom. This makes the cash recovered amount up to about $1,040 leaving about $300, which young Mewis gambled away at Gillette,” wrote Bill Barlow’s Budget on Sept. 28, 1898. “Sheriff Hazen has performed one of the smoothest pieces of detective work known in the history of the county.”
As the new century arrived, the cowboy conman started to suffer some health issues. On Nov. 16, 1904, the Budget reported he was operated on at Douglas Hospital for a tumor. He returned to his ranch the next month. In August 1906 he was operated on again.
Pike died in September 1906 after presumably suffering from alcohol-related issues.
“George M. Pike the cow puncher, stock grower and rancher of Converse County, well known throughout central Wyoming, died in Douglas last week after suffering several months from abscess of the liver,” the Natrona County Tribune reported.
Some accounts have him dying at a poker table while he was winning — that story is not confirmed.
Burial And Memorial
Pike may have been initially buried at the Pioneer Cemetery also called Sunnyside Cemetery. That is what some news accounts report. Whether his body was moved to Douglas’s Parkside Cemetery or was initially buried there is not clear.
What is clear is that Converse County rancher Lee Moore was in Denver in 1908 and ordered a 3,200-pound tombstone for his friend. It had a special message written by Denver journalist Sim Loeb as recorded in the Budget Oct. 14, 1908, and Natrona County Tribune on Oct. 7, 1908.
Bill Barlow’s Budget wrote that the words were a “truthful tribute to a strange composite of character as we who knew him in life will attest.”
They read:
Under this stone in eternal rest,
Sleeps the wildest one of the wayward west,
He was a gambler, sport and cowboy, too
And he led the pace in an outlaw crew,
Was sure on the trigger and staid to the end,
But was never known to quit on a friend.
In the relations of death all mankind is alike,
But in life there was only one George W. Pike.
“I’ve got a fence around him now,” Moore was quoted in the Tribune. “But I want a big gravestone to hold him down.”
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
