Historians generally date the close of the American frontier at 1890. By then, most of the Western United States had been settled. Although Nevada was granted statehood in 1864, a vast region from Belmont south to what eventually became Las Vegas remained largely unmapped and unsettled. The Western frontier, with its farms and big ranches based on cheap land and open range, and its mining boomtowns created by people with a can-do spirit, had yet to make its full appearance in central Nevada. That lay a decade in the future.

Tonopah 1900 and Goldfield 1902 and, to a lesser extent, Rhyolite 1904 , along with countless other small mining camps in central Nevada that came and went like the blossoms of spring, were the last manifestation of the frontier in America. And, to get to the point of this column, the culture, the zeitgeist, of the frontier, when it did appear on the central Nevada desert, was like something straight out of a John Ford Western movie, and it lingers in central Nevada to this day. It was certainly present in the 1950s.

In the winter of 1953, Kennecott Copper was sinking two deep shafts at their enormous copper mine at Ruth, Nevada, located not far from Ely. One was a large vertical shaft 500 feet deep known as the Ruth; the other was on an incline that, as I recall, went down 1500 feet and was known as the Kalinski.

They were working three shifts at the Kalinski shaft. Management there consisted of one superintendent, who was in charge of everything at the shaft. Each shift had what is known in the mining game as a “walking boss,” or “walker,” who was the boss of that shift and reported to the superintendent. Each shift had a “shift boss,” or “shifter,” who worked under the walker and spent most of his time with the crew. My father, Robert G. McCracken, was one of the walkers; another was a man named Peter P. Sewell. Pete, as he was known, apparently wasn’t fully satisfied with his job. In an effort to supplement his income, he had a little run-in with the law in Nye County. As a result, he was unavailable for duty as a walker at the Kalinski for an extended period, so my father and the other walker had to fill in for him by doing 12-hour shifts for months.

Pete’s misadventure, as we might call it, was like something right out of a Western movie. A poet on the crew at the Kalinski shaft wrote a poem recounting Pete’s troubles. Eva LaRue and Angela Haag at the Central Nevada Museum in Tonopah have looked for a copy of that poem in their archives, with no luck. Sadly, I only remember three of the four lines of the first verse:

Pete the Walker sat on his ass

Looking out across the grass.

[It was roast and steak and ribs he saw.]

God damn the law, I’m on my way to Tonopah!

Pete teamed up with a fellow named Johnnie Louis Steen from Bishop, Calif., and the pair headed south down U.S. Highway 6 toward Tonopah in a pickup truck. Just north of Warm Springs, they spotted a cow and calf belonging to rancher C. A. Blair of Hot Creek. Apparently, they saw steak on the hoof. They shot the cow and calf and were in the process of dressing the calf out when local ranchers John Titus and Johnny Locke happened to pass by. Pete and his partner saw them, jumped in their truck, and took off. With Titus and Locke in hot pursuit, a wild chase on the desert ensued.

Unfortunately for the rustlers, Titus was an expert marksman and the chase came to an abrupt end when he shot out both rear tires of the speeding pickup. Absent transportation, the crooks took off on foot, but Titus corralled them with his rifle. Then, while being held by Titus, one of them made a move to get to the pickup, where their rifle was stashed, but Titus stopped him by shooting between his feet. They were held at gunpoint until authorities arrived from Tonopah.

A week later, Pete and Steen were arraigned in justice court in Tonopah. Local ranchers, described as “grim faced,” were in attendance and made it clear they expected a conviction. Among them were Willie, Joe, and Raymond Fallini; Howard, Melvin, and Mary Sharp; Frank Arcularius, Dave Stevens, Emma Ornealas, Joe Clifford, Madison and Johnny Locke, and Albert Hooper.

Cattlemen, it seemed, had become increasingly aroused over the growing audacity of rustlers. One rancher reported $7,000 in losses from rustling in the past year, with one saying 32 head of his cattle had been taken away. Sometimes cattle were hauled away in “wholesale numbers.” At the courthouse, a spokesman for the group said, with dialog right off the frontier, “There’s been too much pussy-footing around with these rustlers. We expect to see this pair sent up for a long stretch, or we’ll be back to learn the reason why.”

In court, both men initially pleaded not guilty. Pete Sewell later dismissed his attorney, Cox Thornton from Reno, and threw himself on the court’s mercy, saying, “I want to get it over with.” His sentence was five years in prison and he was placed on probation after serving 90 days in Nye County jail.

Johnnie Steen unwisely continued to maintain his innocence. The court appointed a young Tonopah attorney by the name of William P. Beko to represent him. Beko tried to get Steen’s case moved to Hawthorne, but failed. Steen was convicted by a jury of eight men and four women and sentenced to serve from one to 14 years. He appealed for probation, which was denied. Judge William D. Hatton said of his decision, “Killing of cattle has become quite an evil in this county and this state. One step to be taken to abate this evil is to see that the guilty pay the price toward correcting it.”