Sam Bass Train Robbery
Mesquite, Dallas County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Sam Bass -- with Seab Barnes, Hank Underwood, "Arkansas" Johnson, and Frank Jackson -- held up a Texas & Pacific train here, April 10, 1878. They took $152, but missed hidden shipment of $30,000. In planning a bank robbery 3 months later, Bass was fatally shot by rangers.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
On an April day in 1878, the notorious outlaw Sam Bass and his gang stopped a Texas & Pacific train near Mesquite and made off with $152—never suspecting a hidden shipment of $30,000 rode aboard. Bass had become one of the most hunted men in Texas, and his luck ran out just months later when Texas Rangers gunned him down during a planned bank robbery. His brief, violent career made him a fixture of frontier legend.
Why it matters
The robbery and Bass's downfall embody the lawless age of railroad expansion, when Texas Rangers and outlaws fought over the wealth the rails carried across the frontier.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Sam Bass
- · Seaborn Barnes
- · Henry Underwood
- · Frank Jackson
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Mesquite Cemetery
Mesquite, TX
This ground was already a burial place before the Texas and Pacific Railroad founded the city of Mesquite in 1873, its earliest marked grave dating to 1859. In 1890 local builder and civic leader Louis C. Ebrite laid out the cemetery in the grid of driveways still used today, and it was formally deeded for cemetery use two years later. It continues to honor area veterans and the generations of families who built Mesquite.
Scyene Road, Old
Dallas, TX
Beginning as a buffalo trail, Scyene Road became one of the earliest roads in Dallas County, linking the town of Scyene with Dallas — a full day's wagon journey west — and reaching east toward Jefferson and Shreveport. Settled in the 1840s and 1850s and named for a town in ancient Egypt, Scyene reportedly sheltered outlaws such as Belle Starr and Jesse James along this route in the 1870s. Once a thriving town with a post office, stores, school, and churches, Scyene declined after the Texas & Pacific Railroad bypassed it in 1872.
Kleberg
Dallas, TX
The town of Kleberg took root in 1850 on the land grant of Robert Justus Kleberg, a veteran of the Republic of Texas army who had fought at San Jacinto. Beginning as a stage stop where two wagon trails met, it grew into a farming town that gained a post office, bank, and shops once the railroad arrived in 1881. Ambitious dams and locks on the Trinity River briefly brought jobs in the early 1900s, until a 1908 flood swept the work away.
Rylie Prairie
Dallas, TX
Named for James and Mary Rylie, who came from Illinois to Texas around 1846, Rylie Prairie flourished as a farming community in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A post office opened in 1883, streets were platted near the Texas Trunk Railroad, and at its height the town held homes, churches, a school, a cotton gin, grist mill, and general stores. It faded in the 1930s and 1940s as rail service ended and families moved toward Dallas and the new highways.