Now That's Interesting History!

Kelly Hurd
Jun 4
3 min read

Did you know Chautauqua County, Kansas, and Pawhuska, Oklahoma, (home of Food Network's Pioneer Woman) are connected in history?

Yep — and it all ties back to an outlaw. You might want to sit down for this story, because it is more than just a little entertaining.

It goes something like this:

Elmer McCurdy was born in Maine, worked as a plumber, and served a brief stint in the U.S. Army, where he learned how to use nitroglycerin. Eventually, he drifted west to Oklahoma and Kansas, where he attempted to bring back the Wild West tradition of train robbing in the early 1900s.

The only problem? He was terrible at it.

During one bank robbery, McCurdy used so much nitroglycerin that he blasted the bank apart and fused $40,000 worth of silver coins directly into the vault walls, making the money impossible to retrieve.

In another attempt, he stopped a passenger train because he believed it was carrying a $400,000 government payment. Unfortunately for McCurdy, he had targeted the wrong train. He escaped with only $46 from the station agent, a few bottles of whiskey, and a coat.

And then came what might be called the Chautauqua County Blunder.

In September 1911, McCurdy attempted to rob The Citizens State Bank in Chautauqua, Kansas. Once again, things did not go as planned. He destroyed the building but failed to open the safe, getting away with only about $150 in loose change!

On October 7, 1911, a sheriff’s posse tracked a heavily intoxicated McCurdy to a hayshed near Bartlesville, Oklahoma. After an hour-long shootout, McCurdy was shot in the chest and killed.

His body was taken to a funeral home in Pawhuska, Oklahoma.

When no next of kin stepped forward to claim him, the undertaker, Joseph L. Johnston, embalmed the body with an unusually strong arsenic-based fluid, effectively mummifying the remains.

Then Johnston saw an opportunity...

He dressed McCurdy’s body in western clothes, placed a rifle in his hands, and charged visitors a nickel to see “The Bandit Who Wouldn’t Give Up.”

In 1916, two carnival promoters showed up pretending to be McCurdy’s long-lost brothers and legally claimed the body. But instead of burying him, they put him on the traveling carnival circuit! Over the next six decades, McCurdy’s body was bought, sold, traded, and displayed in some truly strange places.

He was exhibited across the country as an “authentic” Wild West outlaw. In the 1930s and 1940s, his body was even used in movie theater lobbies to promote exploitation films about the dangers of narcotics, where he was billed as a “dead dope fiend.”

By the 1960s, the body had deteriorated so much that many people assumed it was just a mannequin or a poorly made wax figure. It was eventually sold to a wax museum and later used as collateral for a loan.

And then came the moment that brought Elmer McCurdy’s strange journey back into the headlines.

On December 8, 1976, a television crew was filming an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man inside a funhouse. When a prop master tried to move what he thought was a wax dummy, the arm snapped off in his hand, revealing real human bone and muscle tissue underneath.

The Los Angeles County Coroner launched an investigation. Inside the mummy’s mouth, medical examiners found a 1924 penny and ticket stubs from Louis Sonney’s Museum of Crime, which helped historians and authorities trace the body’s long, bizarre trail and positively identify it as Elmer McCurdy.

Finally, on April 22, 1977, McCurdy was laid to rest at Summit View Cemetery in Guthrie, Oklahoma, in the “Boot Hill” section alongside other historical outlaws, including Bill Doolin.

And to make sure his body would never be exploited or moved again, the state ordered two feet of solid concrete to be poured over his casket before the grave was filled.

So yes — Chautauqua County, Kansas, and Pawhuska, Oklahoma, really are connected in history.

And all because of one of the most unsuccessful outlaws the Wild West ever produced!

And today, they are still connected as Pawhuska has become a thriving tourist destination, the Lodge on the Delaware Tribe Ranch provides luxurious rural lodging for visitors wishing to explore just a few miles north.