Larry Ervin Heck

14 Days on the Outlaw Trail Larry Ervin Heck

During a time in our history that included the 1800s, Rustlers established a trail from the Canadian border to the Mexican Border. It was used to move rustled cattle to markets that were not too fussy about branded animals. The route they used was called the Outlaw Trail by those who chose to write about them. The first book ever written about the Outlaw Trail was published in 1938. Well, I should say it's the first one I found. A writer by the name of Charles Kelly spent years putting it together. About the time the rustlers were fading out, Butch Cassidy and his Wild Bunch used the hideouts and the trails to avoid lawmen looking for them. It is period of time that I became most interested in. In 2004, I connected the hideouts using backcountry roads and trails. I mapped them out one piece at a time until I had a trail going from Malta, Montana to El Paso, Texas. For many years between 2004 and 2013, friends joined me to spend days at a time traveling sections of that trail on weekends and holidays. Then in 2013, the first attempt was made to run the entire trail from end to end. Three drivers went from Malta to El Paso using the backroads previously mapped out by Larry E Heck (me). Later that same year, some of those who missed the first trip, tried it again but only lasted one week and broke it off in Caspar, Wy. In 2014, a third group gathered together through email and other social media. They convinced Larry E Heck to join them to be sure they completed a trip from Malta to Page, AZ. That was all they could do in a 14-day time span. This book is based on that last trip but includes photos and other information from previous trips. It was a 14-day journey along the Outlaw Trail. It visits locations where banks and trains were robbed. It passes through all the designated hideouts used by the Wild Bunch and takes the readers to the campsites we used along the way. GPS waypoints and mile by mile directions keep the reader on the route we used from end to end. For someone who enjoys remote scenery, this book will take them on a 14 adventure that brings back our history from a century in the past.