Butch Cassidys Boyhood Home

by Donna Kennedy

Title

Butch Cassidys Boyhood Home

Artist

Donna Kennedy

Medium

Photograph - Photographs

Description

Original Fine Art Photography by Donna Kennedy...edited in Topaz Studio
Historical landmark in Garfield County, Utah-Photographed on US 89 near Circleville, Utah

This is a photo of Butch Cassidy’s boyhood home, A.K.A. Robert LeRoy Parker. He was 14 when he moved here with his parents from 1880 to the time he left in 1884 when his outlaw life began.
The homestead was deteriorating from the elements of time and has been under a restoration project.

Of all Western outlaws, none are more fondly remembered in story and folklore than the "Robin Hood of the West," Butch Cassidy - the alias of Robert LeRoy Parker. Parker was born 13 April 1866 in Beaver, Utah, and was raised by Mormon pioneer parents on a ranch near Circleville, Utah. While a teenager, Parker fell under the influence of an old rustler named Mike Cassidy. Parker soon left home to ride the outlaw trail.
For the first several years after leaving home, Parker rode the fringe between being an outlaw and a migrant cowboy. He worked several ranches as well as one time in a butcher shop at Rock Springs, Wyoming, from which he took the name "Butch"; and to not bring shame upon honest parents, he added the name Cassidy, most likely in respect for his old mentor. Moving from rustler, for which he served a two-year stint in a Wyoming jail from 1894 to 1896, to master planner of the robbery of trains, banks, and mine payrolls came naturally for Cassidy. With his quick wit and native charm, coupled with his fearlessness and bravery, he never lacked for willing companions to assist in his plans. By 1896 his gang dubbed themselves the "Wild Bunch." This gang consisted of several notorious Western outlaws including Harry Longabaugh, known as the Sundance Kid; Harvey Logan, alias Kid Curry; Ben Kilpatrick, the Tall Texan; Harry Tracy, Elzy Lay, who was Butch's best friend, and several others. Operating around the turn of the century, Cassidy and his partners put together the longest sequence of successful bank and train robberies in the history of the American West.
His name still generates fond recollections from many Utah old-timers who love to tell stories about him. Whether he died in South America or died of old age under one of the several identities that are attributed to him may never be fully proven.
In 1969, when 20th Century Fox released its box office smash 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,' reporters came to Cassidy's childhood home, looking for his family. They found Mrs. Lula Parker Betenson, 86, Butch's youngest sister. Among other things, she told reporters that Cassidy had not died in South America in 1909, as was widely believed, but had come back to visit some 16 years later, in 1925. Lula said that Butch instead died in Spokane, Wash., in 1937, and spent his last years as a trapper and prospector.

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Uploaded

September 20th, 2018

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