The History

Sheriff James H. Kinkead:

The tireless, literature-reading, Washoe County lawman who led the chase after the 1870 train heist. His relentless detective work and frontier grit exemplify the pursuit of justice at the heart of the story. 

John Chapman: 

A Sunday school teacher-turned-conspirator who betrayed his gentle reputation for a shot at riches. Caught and convicted, he earned an 18-year prison sentence  and joined the mass prison breakout of 1871, a dramatic fall from grace that underscores the era’s thin line between virtue and vice. 

Robert Morrison: 

A well-liked Wells Fargo agent and storekeeper from Benton who took up arms to pursue the escaped convicts of 1871. His tragic death so inflamed local citizens that vigilantes exacted swift vengeance, lynching the convicts responsible without a trial – a stark episode of frontier justice that echoes throughout the tale. 

Jack Davis: 

A charismatic Virginia City mining entrepreneur-turned-outlaw leader. In November 1870 he participated in the West’s first train robbery near Verdi, Nevada – holding up a Central Pacific train and escaping with $41,600 in gold coins. Davis’ charm and brazenness couldn’t save him from justice in the end.

John Squiers:

A veteran bandit with a long rap sheet, Squiers was already a notorious stagecoach robber before he threw in with train heist gang. He was sentenced to twenty years in the Nevada State Prison, and true to form, he became one of the ringleaders in the bloody 1871 prison break, proving that old outlaws die hard. 

Samuel Clemens:

Long before he was world-famous Mark Twain, he honed his craft in the rowdy boomtown of Virginia City. From 1862 to 1865, Twain served as a reporter for the Territorial Enterprise, the local newspaper. His witty dispatches captured the lawless, larger-than-life spirit of the Comstock Lode era, the very atmosphere of adventure and misadventure that infuses the film’s setting. 

1860s Virginia City mine:

A bustling Comstock Lode mine during Virginia City’s 1860s heyday, where grit and gamble converged in every tunnel. The vast wealth extracted from mines like this fueled Nevada’s boom and that constant flow of riches became a magnet for trouble, as outlaws schemed to intercept the fortune flowing from these depths and into the pages of history. 

1870s miner hard at work:

A lone hard-rock miner toils by lantern light in the 1870s, chipping away at Nevada’s mineral wealth one swing at a time. His back-breaking labor underpins the era’s high stakes – every gold or silver vein he wrestles from the earth could mean boom or bust. Many of the bandits from our story were out-of-work miners, or men simply fed up with the mining companies taking advantage of them.

Railroad tracks near where robbery occurred:

A quiet stretch of Central Pacific railroad track near Verdi, Nevada – deceptively peaceful today, but the scene of a history-making holdup in 1870. 

Nevada State Prison plot:

A blueprint of the Nevada State Prison at Warm Springs (Carson City) as it stood in the late 1860s that once held the territory’s most notorious criminals. Within these confines sat the captured Verdi train robbers – until September 17, 1871, when 29 convicts overpowered the guards and burst out in the most notorious jailbreak of Nevada’s early years.

Plaque about the lynchings:

A historical marker near Bishop, California, recounts the grim climax of the 1871 prison break saga. After posse member Robert Morrison was slain in a mountain shootout, enraged vigilantes took justice into their own hands: they seized recaptured escapees and lynched them on the spot as retribution for Morrison’s murder.

Warm Springs Hotel: 

Built in 1860 of hand-hewn sandstone, the Warm Springs Hotel was an imposing wayside inn. By the time of our story, the hotel site adjoined the state penitentiary that housed the captured train robbers, and its surrounding roads would soon witness outlaw bloodshed as well.