Etta Place: Mystery Woman

Most of us who follow western legends and folklore know Etta Place as the female member of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid trio but history has some theories of its own about Etta...

The most interesting is that she was really Ann Bassett, the Queen of the Rustlers of Brown Hole, Colorado.  Ann could ride, shoot and had the reputation of being able to hold her own with any outlaw male.  Photo comparisons done in the 1990s give it a 5000 to 1 chance that Etta Place and Ann Bassett were two different women.  Both carried noticeable matching scars.

Comparing known activities of the two women doesn't give historians indisputable answers either as when one was "on vacation",  the other was seen in public avenues.  Other times when Etta reportedly was docking in New York, Ann was seen on her ranch in Colorado. 

Around 1907, Etta slipped out of Western history into legend and the speculations are varied.  Was she a successful madam who operated a brothel in Fort Worth, Texas until dying in a hotel fire in 1962?  Did she live out her life in Argentina where she married a government official? 

Other legends include Sundance checking her into a Denver hospital, where she died alone during an operation, or maybe living with Sundance in Mexico City well into the 1920s.  There are records that she applied for a death certificate for an outlaw in New Mexico in 1911 or 1912.

There is plenty of mystery surrounding one Etta Place, supposed lover of Sundance the Kid, but little proof of just who this woman was or where her life began or ended. 

Next time...Billy the Kid

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This Day in History:  On February 16, 1878, silver dollars become legal tender.  Strongly supported by western mining interests and farmers, the Bland-Allison Act—which provided for a return to the minting of silver coins—becomes the law of the land.