The Johnson County War: Wyoming's Corporate Kill List

In April of eighteen ninety-two, a private army boarded a train in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and rode north toward Johnson County with a list of names. The list, later entered into the public record, contained the names of homesteaders and small ranchers in northeastern Wyoming whom the Wyoming Stock Growers Association had designated as cattle rustlers. The plan was to kill them.

The Stock Growers Association represented the large cattle barons who had dominated Wyoming's territorial economy. They had already used blacklisting and political influence to suppress competition from small ranchers. Now they hired twenty-two gunmen from Texas and assembled roughly twenty Wyoming regulators under the leadership of Frank Canton, a former Johnson County sheriff. Their sponsor included some of the wealthiest men in Wyoming.

The group killed two men before they were stopped. Nate Champion and Nick Ray were killed at the KC Ranch outside Kaycee after a siege that lasted most of a day. Champion kept a diary during the siege, which was recovered from the burning ranch house. His last entry ended with the house on fire.

Three hundred armed settlers, led by the Johnson County sheriff, surrounded the invaders at the TA Ranch. The invaders sent a rider through the cordon to reach the telegraph. The governor of Wyoming wired the President. The United States Army was dispatched, and the Sixth Cavalry arrived on April thirteenth to relieve the besieged gunmen.

Forty six men were taken into custody. No one was convicted. The costs of prosecution were dismissed when witnesses could not be secured.

The original kill list was documented and is preserved in the historical record. The event demonstrated, with considerable clarity, whose interests Wyoming's government served in eighteen ninety-two.