Niobrara Reads: The Banditti of the Plains with Rick Kaan

Plan now to participate in Niobrara Reads featuring The Banditti of the Plains, or, The Cattlemen’s Invasion of Wyoming in 1892 by A. S. Mercer this winter.

Books can be picked up at the library in January. After you read it, pass it on to another Niobrara County resident.

In 1894, when A. S. Mercer published this angry eyewitness account of the cattlemen’s invasion of Wyoming, the book was so thoroughly and ruthlessly suppressed that few copies of that edition remain today. Historians have questioned some of Mercer’s conclusions about the Johnson County range war, but they have never controverted the facts of the cattlemen-homesteader struggle as he grimly reported them. With the intention of “executing” alleged rustlers and terrorizing the homesteaders, a band of fifty-two cattlemen and hired gunmen invaded Johnson County, Wyoming, in April 1892. After besieging and killing “the bravest man in Johnson County,” the raiders in turn found themselves besieged by the homesteaders and finally in the protective custody of the United States cavalry.

  Nancy Tabb, Local History Librarian at the Johnson County Library will speak on Wednesday, March 18 at 6 p.m. and Historian Rick Kaan will share his research on Wednesday, April 15 at 6 p.m.