The marker just above the old stagecoach road reads “My Wife – Jane Kirkham, Died March 7, 1879, Aged 38 years, 3 months, 7 days.” Who was Jane Kirkham? The old stage road was known as the Arkansas Valley Road. It was a bone-jarring 26-hour trip between Buena Vista and Leadville when, in 1879, Buena Vista was the terminus of the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad. In 1879 stagecoach freight sometimes included bars of silver bullion being hauled 35 miles from the mining district of Leadville south to the railhead at Buena Vista. Robberies were becoming increasingly common. Someone seemed to have inside information, as the only time the bandit struck was when a shipment of silver was on board. The sheriff decided to put an end to the robberies himself. He didn't tell anyone, including his deputies. On the next stagecoach that carried a shipment of silver, he climbed aboard. Heading south from Leadville, the stagecoach was near the Twin Lakes junction when a highwayman stepped onto the road. Short and wearing a duster that touched the ground, the bandit's broad-brimmed hat was pulled down almost to the top of the bandanna that covered the bandit's nose. The bandit brandished a shotgun and signaled the driver to stop. At that, the sheriff drew his rifle and ordered the bandit to throw down the shotgun. Instead, the bandit turned and fled. The sheriff fired and killed the bandit with one shot in the back. Sheriff Kirkham walked over to the body. When he turned it over and pulled down the bandanna, he was shocked to be looking at his own wife! The sheriff was so ashamed that he did not want to bury her body in Leadville. So, he laid her to rest where she died. That story is not true. It has been told and retold, written and rewritten so many times that the myth has become a legend. But it is not true. Why is the woman stage robber story made up? First, no record exists of a Leadville sheriff or deputy named Kirkham, nor of any stagecoach robberies along that road during that time, nor of any missing silver. Second, every stagecoach robbery was reported. Stagecoach robberies were big news, and a robbery by a woman would have made national headlines. In fact, it was national news 10 years later when Pearl Hart robbed a stage in Arizona. So, who was Jane Kirkham? She was born Eliza Jane Harris in Tama, Iowa, Nov. 28, 1840. She had an older brother, a younger brother and a younger sister. On July 30, 1857, 16-year-old Eliza Jane Harris married 20-year-old Philip Daily in Tama, Iowa. Eliza Jane bore three children – M.V. Daily in 1858, Cory E. Daily in 1859 and Amos Grant Daily in 1864. In 1865, Eliza Jane's widowed mother, along with her older brother and younger sister, traveled in a wagon train from Tama, Iowa, to the Bitteroot Valley of Montana Territory, using the newly opened, but dangerous, Boseman Trail. In making this journey, Jane abandoned her three children to the Daily family as her husband had enlisted in the Union army. In Montana Territory, Eliza Jane, who went by Eliza or Eliza Jane in Iowa, now went by the name Jane. The now Jane Kirkham gave birth in Missoula, Montana, to a son, James Oscar Kirkham, on June 29, 1869. The father, Benjamin Franklin Kirkham Jr., was nine years Jane's senior. By 1870, Jane, Ben and their son Oscar, along with her mother and older brother Martin, had all made a long wagon trip to Colorado. Advertisements in the Pueblo Chieftain show M.V.B. Harris promoting himself as a real estate agent. Two 1870 deeds show a B. Franklin Kirkham buying a lot in the Town of Pueblo and another property a few miles outside of Pueblo. On July 22, 1872, Jane gave birth to her fifth child. At that time, Jane Kirkham and her husband lived in what was to be Rosita (Custer County), Colorado, a now-defunct mining town south of Westcliffe. A Frank Kirkham is listed by the Pueblo Chieftain “as one of the first to arrive in Rosita.” In 1874 Jane's husband was reported in the Pueblo Chieftain to be the co-founder of the Golden Eagle mine, located 7 miles east of Rosita and yielding 2 to 5 ounces per ton. Kirkham, however, may have sold (or been forced out of) his interest in Rosita's Golden Eagle mine prematurely. On April 13, 1879, a month after Jane's passing, the Pueblo Chieftain reported that “The Golden Eagle, discovered by Dick Irwin and B.F. Kirkham, is being quietly worked by the current owners, Irwin and Cornwall … with good results, giving from five to 20 ounces of gold to the ton, the lower figure giving good returns for working.” The silver “boom” in Leadville began in earnest in 1878. The Kirkhams undoubtedly moved to the Lake County area at that time. But on March 7, 1879, Jane Kirkham died and was buried beside the wagon road. Let's return to the original question. Why is Jane Kirkham buried in a lonely gravesite along the old wagon road to Leadville? The answer is that she and her husband were living on, or near, that property at the time. The 1880 census shows a number of Kirkhams living not in Leadville, but in Lake County census enumeration District 89. (This is the key to the story.) That district includes the location of the grave, east of the Arkansas River and between the south boundary of Lake County and Empire Gulch. Ben and Jane likely lived in a nearby mining community, now a historically obscure ghost town called Hawkinsville. Jane Kirkham likely died on the property, either from an illness, from an accident or a gunshot wound. In her illness, she may have expressed her desire to be buried by the river. If she died in an accident, practicality may have intervened and the small alluvial fan among the rocks provided a suitable location for the grave. It is also possible that Jane (and other family members) were highwaymen, robbing some of the hundreds of travelers to Leadville each day. There would have been many “targets,” traveling with money and valuables. Martha Mahon, an early resident and hotel proprietor in Buena Vista, recorded in her memoirs that “300 freighters and 12 stages passed by daily in 1879.” Jane's death during a robbery attempt would give a bit of understanding to how the myth may have started. Eliza Jane – Harris – Daily – Kirkham has not been, and will not be, remembered in history. She is not in any of the books about women of the Wild West. Yet, at a time when most Americans never traveled farther than 10 miles from their home during their lifetimes, Jane led an unusual, undoubtedly challenging and adventurous 38 years. She was part of the settlement of the American West. J. David Holt is a local historian who has been published in True West magazine. His full story of Jane Kirkham was published in the Journal of the Wild West Association.
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