For a man in the 1950s, the little 10-by-13-foot wooden jail house in Kaycee, Wyoming, that held some of the West’s most notorious outlaws proved to be an escape from the law.
In the jail was the last place he figured anyone would look for someone trying not to get caught.
It was not always that way.
Laurel Foster, director of the Hoofprints of the Past Museum in Kaycee, said the wooden jail that served the area well during the years of the Hole-in-The-Wall Gang and and other Western outlaws was built to keep the bad guys from breaking out.
The jail now sits behind the museum next to a wooden schoolhouse that once served as Johnson County Deputy Sheriff Leonard Beard’s home.
It was Beard who who enforced the law there from the late 1890s until his resignation halfway into the next century.
“He was known as being a very tough character and very good at his job,” Foster said. “He actually chased down a lot of rough outlaws. He captured some of them.
"Tom O’Day was one of them he chased in pursuit (as well as) Kid Curry.”
The jail was built with 41 layers of 2-by-6-inch boards that were laid flat to make up the walls of a jail that was outlaw resistant from the inside and out due to knives or other instruments trying to whittle holes in the building.
Foster, a native of Kaycee, said the jail would have been used to house more significant prisoners for a short time before they could be transported to the Johnson County jail in Buffalo.
The interior of the jail has a hole in the ceiling for a stove and the museum now displays it with a small bed to one side.
Foster said Beard used five kegs of nails to put together his jail.
A Full House
According to local historian J. Elmer Brock who collected oral histories and other material that was part of the 1982 book “Our Powder River Heritage," the little jail on one occasion was filled to capacity.
“He wrote that at one time there were 13 people thrown in there after they were drinking too much and being too rowdy,” Foster said, noting how small the tiny jailhouse was. “The last one was thrown on top.”
In his account of Leonard, Brock, who lived and ranched in the area during Leonard’s tenure, called the deputy “a man with unlimited courage.”
He dealt with Hole-In-The-Wall outlaws and others when the growing community, businesses were starting — and recovering from the impact of the Johnson County War.
Brock wrote of Leonard arresting a man named Razor Dick Hale who had a $1,000 bounty on his head.
The lawman shot the outlaw’s horse and Hale in the arm. The outlaw never made it to the jail because while trying to get a vehicle to transport the wounded prisoner, he escaped.
The Natrona County Tribune on Sept. 11, 1902, reported about Johnson County Sheriff Kennedy returning from a chase after Hale.
“Mr. Kennedy has a close call in Powder River canyon being kicked by a horse, thrown down and being rolled over by another horse until he saw stars by the millions,” the newspaper reported.
Beard also chased Wild Bunch outlaws associated with the Wilcox train robbery in 1899, getting in a shootout that left one outlaw wounded as well as Beard’s horse.
Stolen Horses
During an encounter with noted outlaw Tom O’Day and another character named Earl Shobe, Beard caught them with several stolen horses from South Dakota.
“He shot it out with them and took the horses, and the men’s pack horse as well,” Brock wrote. “O’Day later said that, ‘Beard’s bullet cut off a lock of my hair.’”
According to Brock, Beard’s jail housed several rough criminals and was the scene of just one escape.
The schoolhouse that sits next to the jail at the museum has a history with Beard as well.
The deputy lived in the building, but whether that was after it was moved to town or before is not clear.
The building was the first home on the Kaltenbach family homestead, Foster said.
After the family built a more substantial home it was moved to into the town area and, according to Brock who wrote his article, in the 1950s had a trap door built in it and a tunnel to a gulch.
Kaltenbach had no knowledge of the trap door.
Brock speculated that it likely was there to give him an edge on any criminals trying to ambush him.
The building also saw use as a school in addition to a stint as city hall.
The Sheep-Shearer
In 1903, the jail was likely overnight housing to a Dr. Norris Potts, who reportedly shot and killed a sheep-shearer outside a Kaycee bar in May 1903.
“Early last Monday morning a telephone message from Kaycee announced that a sheep-shearer known as Box-car Jackson had been shot and instantly killed in Jack Toddy’s saloon during the previous night,” the Savannah Democrat in Missouri published on May 29, 1903.
“Potts had been on a drunken spree at Kaycee for some two or three weeks and was very boisterous and disagreeable,” the account reported.
Jackson had been shot through the chest and was unarmed.
The newspaper, reprinting a Buffalo Voice story, stated that the doctor was arrested by the deputy sheriff in Kaycee. Potts had been brought to Buffalo and denied that he had shot Jackson.
“So far as The Voice has been able to learn, the doctor has always born a good reputation,” the newspaper reported. “Samuel Jackson, the murdered man, was about 45 years of age and has been engaged in sheep-shearing and ranch work in this country for the past three years.”
The interior of the building where Deputy Leonard Beard once lived and had a trap door with a tunnel leading outside the structure. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily) 
Deputy Leonard Beard built the jail by putting the 2x6-inch boards flat to prevent an easy escape by whittling with a knife. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily) 
The former homestead home of a Kaycee family served many purposes, including the home of the deputy sheriff for a time and also as City Hall and a school. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily)
Drunken Bartender
Foster recounted another story about the jail and how Jack Toddy himself apparently became too drunk and unruly one night and Leonard put him in jail.
“The next day he was yelling and yelling for someone to come that he was thirsty,” Foster said. “Apparently, it was unlocked and he could have walked out an anytime.”
For those who were locked in, the jailer used a strong iron bar that was positioned across the front of the door along with a lock to secure prisoners inside.
Beard left his role with the county in 1905.
An article in the July 8, 1905, Buffalo Bulletin said the lawman had put in his resignation and was headed to Oklahoma.
“Deputy Beard has made a good officer and his resignation will be regretted by the people generally,” the newspaper reported.
The Last Place They’d Look
A more modern story associated with the jail involves a man who robbed a saloon and grocery store somewhere outside of Kaycee in 1950.
The thief then made a beeline for town.
Foster said the story was not clear where the thief came from.
“They just came up here and hid out in the jail for several days,” she said. “It depends on the time of year, I guess, but I don’t know the timing.
"I don’t know if it would be in a newspaper or if it was just one of those things and nobody wrote it down.”
In his account of the story, Brock characterized the thief as “living the ‘Life of Riley’” for a few days, alluding to an old TV comedy show from the 1950s.
“When finally discovered and taken to the county jail in Buffalo, the man complained bitterly, claiming he much preferred the Kaycee jail and its stock of drinking whiskey and food,” Brock wrote.
The jail was sold in 1952 and moved to the museum location in the 1990s, Foster said. It originally sat on Nolan Street just more than a block north of the museum’s location.
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
