Law & Order in a Dangerous Boom-Town, Double Hanging in Silver City, New Mexico, circa 1880
In 1874, his brother-in-law, Harvey Whitehill (1838-1906), succeeded him as Sheriff, and Grant County was lucky that he did. He was “exactly what he appeared, a whole souled, honest and straightforward man.... he never missed an opportunity to aid a friend or extend a favor and many were the recipients of hid unostentatious charitable acts. He possessed a remarkable power of making friends of everyone he came in contact.... he fought a good fight and fought it well.”
He brought law and order to a mining town that was just as rough and lawless as any of the famous towns in the southwest. Whitehill was successful at dealing with the criminal element, and used paid informants to stay one step ahead of them, and that didn’t always please the people who elected him. His methods might have been questionable but he always got results. “According to Governor Miguel Otero, Whitehill arrested more culprits than any man in the territory.”
A double hanging of a black man who fatally-stabbed a Fort Bayard soldier, and Barney O’Toole who gunned down a man in
Georgetown for no reason. There was considerable controversy over a black man being hanged next
to a white man with about 400 spectators.
There came a time during the late 1870s when Silver City was at the mercy of the outlaws, and Sheriff Whitehill knew he needed some tough deputies to bring law and order to a town that was getting a well-deserved reputation for gun fights. One of his most controversial appointments was Dan Tucker, who had already killed a man in Colorado and perhaps another in nearby Dona Ana County. When he arrived, the criminal element was shooting up the streets. The pillars of the community were fed-up, and wanted this lawlessness to end by any means necessary.
After a few months on the job, Tucker killed one man who resisted arrest and put a bullet in the back of another who had just knifed a man. A few weeks later, he shot an armed drunk, gunned-down two horse thieves, and wounded another. By the end of the year the criminals steered clear of Silver City, and people loved or hated the new deputy. At least eight men were shot dead by Dan Tucker, and Silver City’s leading citizens didn’t object to his methods.
To stop drunken shooting sprees an ordinance was passed prohibiting gunfire within the city limits. When an angry Mexican ignored the law and began shooting up the streets Tucker ordered him to stop; when he didn’t, he shot him dead in his tracks.
When he found a Mexican trying to murder his son, Tucker charged inside with his gun drawn. After the man knocked the revolver out of his hand with a blunt object, Dan used his other hand and shot him dead. By the end of the year, Henry Whitehill had brought order back to what had become a dangerous mining town, and the criminal element knew Dan Tucker was nobody to fool with. He’d shoot you in a heartbeat and probably enjoy doing it.