Article Contributed on: 10/31/2009 11:36:32 AM
Through 150 years of existence a town can accumulate a good number of ghosts, and Golden is no exception. They have included people from upstanding families to outlaws, and word has it they haunt this city to this day. On Halloween today I will give folks a look at some of them:
For years a ghost has been told to have haunted Golden's oldest business, the Buffalo Rose at 1119 Washington downtown. This ghost has never been seen, but is always known to make noise. Looking back on the long and colorful history of this bar, there is one man who appears to be the ghost folks are looking for: the outlaw
"Heartless" Edward Franklin. Franklin was a member of the Musgrove Gang, a band of robbers and horse thieves which had entrenched itself at Bonner Springs in Larimer County. Led by
Luther H. Musgrove, they targeted government mules, horses and livestock throughout northern Colorado and southern Wyoming, using the fact Indians were often blamed as a cover. On one particularly bold raid the Musgrove Gang cut open a quartermaster's tent and stole a safe, blowing it open and getting $1,800. Denver authorities caught up with Musgrove and arrested him, taking him to Denver. His fellow gang members, led by Franklin and
Sanford Duggan, led a plot to spring Musgrove from jail, holing up in Golden to plan his escape.
Franklin was an escapee from Ft. Saunders, Wyoming, where he had been taken after being wounded in a gunfight with 17 soldiers apprehending him for mule stealing. He had vowed to protect Musgrove at all costs, and vice-versa. Duggan was an escaped murderer and robber who robbed among others Denver Judge
Olson Brooks who had presided over Duggan's trial for assault. Gen.
David Cook, head of the Rocky Mountain Detective Agency, was tipped by Brooks that one of the dollars Duggan stole was unique because it had been repaired with official paper from Brooks' office, and law enforcement around the area were placed on the alert for it.
This $20 bill surfaced when it changed hands at the Buffalo Rose, then known Jack Hill's saloon, during a drunken binge on November 23, 1868. Jefferson County Sheriff
Keith led Cook and 5 other officers to the bar. They had a shootout in the darkened saloon, from which Duggan escaped and fled down Clear Creek while the innocent bartender
Miles Hill, Jack's brother, was mortally wounded. The posse turned their attention to the Overland Hotel next door north (where the Buffalo Rose dance hall is now), where they knew Franklin was sleeping off the alcohol.
Led by Sheriff Keith with a lighted candle, the officers quietly entered the room. They recognized a scar Franklin had from his wound at Ft. Saunders, and when he rolled over, groaned and opened his eyes, Cook said:
"Franklin, we want you."
"The hell you do!" Franklin shouted back.
"Yes, come on quietly."
"Quietly be damned! Where's my gun? No damn officer from Denver can arrest me. I'm not that sort of stuff. You can make up your mind to that." He rose from the bed, sending the officers backward by striking at him with his fists. Cook took out a pair of handcuffs and approached Franklin. "Oh, it's irons you have, is it?" Franklin said as he lunged at the officers, "If that's what you're up to, I have some myself." and he went for the loaded revolver he kept under his pillow. One of the officers clobbered Franklin with his revolver barrel, sending him to the other side of the bed, and with blood running down his head, Franklin thrashed around yelling "Come on, all of you!" He then jumped to his feet, pounded his chest and said "If you want to shoot, put to there-there!" The officers showed restraint, while Franklin vowed never to be arrested. He shouted "Damn you, if you don't shoot, I will. I will fight your whole gang, if you will give me a fair show. I won't be arrested, I won't go. I'll die first-but I'll die hard. One or two of you will go with me if I go. Ed Franklin does not sell out for a song." He made one desperate lunge for Cook's revolver that had been put on a table, and Cook and Frank Smith fired almost simultaneously, the balls passing an inch apart through "Heartless" Edward Franklin's heart. He was no more, and the lawmen paid the hotel proprietor $50 for the damage.
It had been Golden's Night of Horrors, as the
Transcript newspaper said, with the town thrown in a frenzy. The next day a lynch mob hung Musgrove in Denver, and later Duggan was intercepted in Cheyenne and brought back to Denver where he too was lynched on December 2nd. But was this truly and finally the end of the Musgrove Gang? In 1904 the
Transcript told:
"There is a man in Golden who sleeps in the same bed room where a man was shot to death in bed, many years ago. He told us recently that often he heard peculiar noises that he could not account for during the night while lying in his bed, but he said that he cared nothing at all about it as he is not superstitious."
Making great noise at the end of his life, the outlaw's ghost continues to make noise long after his death. The saloon building has been replaced and the Overland has been destroyed for nearly 100 years, but the place's ghost still remains.