The first robbery of the transcontinental robbery was pulled off in 1870 near Reno by a gang of misfits who were soon captured and imprisoned. Within a year they instigated the largest prison break in the country's history. Two men were murdered and Nevada's lieutenant governor seriously wounded. They stole a huge number of weapons from the prison armory.Six escapees headed south with a goal of reaching Bishop, California. Along the way they murdered a young mail rider from the mining camp of Aurora, Nevada. The gruesome murder put the community on the war-path. The convicts holed up in a rugged canyon near today's Mammoth Lakes, California. Using poweful rifles from the armory, they out-gunned a posse out to take them dead or alive. Two posse members were killed in the ferocious battle.An enraged citizenry would ignore the law in wreaking swift and terrible retribution.The tale is told in the context of its time: the construction of the transcontinental railroad; the mineral discoveries that helped build the economies of the West; the hard life in the mining camps; and the preference for vigilantism over tiresome judicial procedures. Abraham Lincoln, John C. Fremont, Mark Twain, the vicious killer Joh Daly, and the famous madam Julia Bulette, figure in the story, as do other luminaries of the time.The appendix tells the story of Samuel Clemens' first use of the pseudonym "Mark Twain" in his iconic 'Letter from Carson City.'
