The Day the Sundance Kid Rode Into Red Lodge and Left Empty-Handed

A friend came to visit me last fall, and I knew exactly where I wanted to take her. We drove down into Red Lodge with the Beartooth foothills rising up around us, and I walked her straight to a brick building on Broadway with a plaque on it. She leaned in to read it and looked up at me like I had just handed her something rare. Because I had. Right there, on a wall in our own backyard, was proof that two of the most notorious outlaws in American history once stood on the same sidewalk we were standing on, and walked away with nothing.

That story deserves to be told properly.

The Sundance Kid and Kid Curry: The Wild West Outlaws Who Targeted Montana

Before Harry Longabaugh became the silver-screen legend we know as the Sundance Kid, he and his partner Harvey Logan, known as Kid Curry, were cutting a very real and very reckless path across the American West. Both men were sharpshooting outlaws who had built reputations on being hard to catch and harder to stop. That reputation, it turns out, did not hold up in Red Lodge.

The trouble started on June 28, 1897, when the gang rode into Belle Fourche, South Dakota, and robbed the Butte County Bank at gunpoint. The take was embarrassingly small. According to historical accounts, they made off with somewhere between $75 and $97, far short of the $30,000 they believed was inside. To make matters worse, the scout they sent into town beforehand, a man named Tom O'Day, got drunk instead of doing his job. The whole operation was a fiasco before it even started.

 Escaping Deadwood: How the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang Ended Up in Montana

After the Belle Fourche botch, the law was moving fast. The gang retreated toward their known hideout, the Hole in the Wall in Wyoming, a rugged stretch of red sandstone canyon that had sheltered outlaws for years. But the safety they expected was not waiting for them there. Posses were closing in, telegraphs were buzzing with descriptions of the gang, and the usual cover had worn thin.

They were eventually caught, jailed in Deadwood, South Dakota, and then did something that probably made the whole region nervous: they escaped. Three months after the Belle Fourche robbery, Longabaugh and Logan broke out of jail and went right back to planning their next move. This time, they had their eyes on a bank in a Montana coal town called Red Lodge.

The Carbon County Bank Job: Red Lodge's Famous Outlaw Near-Miss

On September 18, 1897, the gang rode into Red Lodge with a plan. Right across the street from the Spofford Hotel, which today you know as the Pollard, sat the Carbon County Bank. The outlaws camped outside of town to scout the situation and then slipped in to get a feel for things.

Here is where it falls apart again.

Marshal St. Clair got word that four men were sitting around town with plans to rob the bank. He went straight to the bank employees and told them what was coming. When the Sundance Kid and Kid Curry realized the marshal knew who they were, they cleared out of Red Lodge fast. But Sheriff John Dunn was already in motion. He assembled a posse and rode hard after them, covering roughly 80 miles of Montana terrain before catching up to the gang near the town of Lavina. During the chase, Dunn shot Kid Curry through the wrist. The outlaws were captured, photographed, and transported back to South Dakota to face justice.

There is actually a photograph from that capture that circulates in historical collections. It shows Sheriff Dunn standing with Kid Curry, the Sundance Kid, and Walt Punteney being walked toward a train in Lavina, Montana. Kid Curry's injured wrist is raised in the frame. They look like men who know exactly how badly it went.

Red Lodge Montana History: Visiting the Pollard Hotel & Historic Sites Today

Walk down Broadway in Red Lodge today, and you are walking through a place that holds this whole episode in its bones. The Pollard Hotel, originally built as the Spofford in 1893, is still standing at the corner of Broadway and 11th Street. Its guests over the years have included Buffalo Bill Cody, Calamity Jane, and William Jennings Bryan. The brick walls have been remodeled and changed a dozen times over, but the building itself watched everything unfold that September morning.

The Carbon County Bank building across the street carries a historical marker that reads plainly: "Foiled Bank Robbery Site." It notes the date, the names, the escape, the chase, and the capture. It is the kind of plaque that makes you stop mid-stride.

If you want to see more, the Carbon County Historical Society offers a self-guided walking tour of Red Lodge that takes you directly to the robbery site, through the mining history of the town, into the Victorian neighborhoods up the hill, and past buildings that have been on the National Historic Register for decades. It is one of the better hours you can spend in this part of Montana.

Why Red Lodge's Wild West History Still Matters to Montanans

There is something about knowing this happened here, not in a movie, not in a dime novel, but on a real street in a real Montana town, that changes how you look at the place. Red Lodge was a coal boomtown in 1897, loud and dusty and full of immigrants and miners and men who came west to make something of themselves. Into that world rode two of the most wanted men in America, and a local marshal and a Carbon County sheriff sent them packing.

That is a Montana story if there ever was one.

The next time you drive south from Billings on Highway 212 with the Beartooths coming up ahead of you, take the turn into Red Lodge. Walk Broadway. Find the plaque. Stand there for a minute and think about what it must have looked like when Sheriff Dunn rode out with his posse in September of 1897, chasing two legends across 80 miles of open country.

Then go get a meal at the Pollard and appreciate the fact that you live somewhere this interesting.