Riding the Outlaw Trail: Following in the Footsteps of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid [Paperback]

'An adventure that suggests there's still plenty of 'wild' left in the West. It's exciting, uncomfortable and unpredictable.'

'A bumptious and entertaining adventure story. Wonderful chroniclers of the sights, sounds and feelings of that grand, harsh country.'

A great tale. A cracking read. Packed full of adventure and drama, an enjoyable insight to human nature.

A record of a courageous quest. Absolutely gripping.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid – the last of the legendary outlaws, were captured on daguerreotype, romanced in fiction, and immortalised on film by Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Simon Casson sets out on horseback to retrace the real life footsteps of his boyhood heroes covering 2,000 miles of America’s toughest and most treacherous terrain.

Steeped in the lore of the Old West but lacking desert and mountain survival skills, Simon recruits ex-marine commando Richard Adamson. Together they grapple with hostile landscape, climatic extremes, vital supply shortages, and bigtime personality clashes.

Battling from one outlaw hideout to another, following trails sometimes only accessible by horseback, they are constantly taxed to the limit.

In this dramatic account of their adventure Simon and Richard also bring vividly to life the exciting and violent lives of the Wild Bunch 100 years ago, and give us a heart-warming picture of the rancher families who live and work this demanding land today.

Riding the Outlaw Trail in the Footsteps of Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid tells of our dramatic unsupported horseback adventure - an equine holy grail. This no-holds-barred epic follows the Wild West's favorite horseback bandits through America's remote, grand and inhospitable country.

It seems that wherever Butch and Sundance appeared they made a lasting impression. Leaving no diaries or personal accounts, they wrote few letters but managed to handsomely write themselves into the history books – and, they are still writing. Riding under many aliases, they stayed long in the saddle and rode some of the hardest trails in the Americas to evade capture.

We know that Robert LeRoy Parker, alias Butch Cassidy and Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, The Sundance Kid were something special. Both had high standards (when required), were respected by most who knew them, and had been born to caring families in the West and East. As restless youths they found themselves leaving home eventually meeting one another through common ground: horses and adventure.

Butch was affable, good-humored and intelligent – certainly one to enjoy high jinks and a night on the town. Sundance, aloof but still friendly, was the quieter of the two who liked sharp suits, monogrammed clothing and the occasional hard drink. Both were criminals but not killers, some who rode and robbed with them were desperate men. Most historians believe that neither Butch nor Sundance had blood on their hands – certainly not until their very end. Both served time for horse-theft and promised that they would never be captured again, but despite knowing right from wrong, they still continued to choose another way.

We don’t apologize or make excuses for them or their actions. Rather not. Butch and Sundance targeted and relieved dominant corporations, powerful railroads and greedy moneymen of the day and championed the smaller man. Cynically, little has changed in a century – the corporations are ever more powerful influencing government, railroads hardly run, let alone on time, and modern day big business is becoming financially corpulent, grotesque and seemingly unstoppable.

Butch and Sundance were consummate professionals at their craft – undoubtedly the best in their business. As the frontier finally closed in 1900, their game was up. They tried to go straight in South America – sadly their best-laid plans didn’t quite work out. We concentrate on their travels in the American West.

This book is about a grueling journey, on horseback, across two thousand miles of desert, mountain, canyon and high plains wilderness in New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana, following the trail of the most elusive and successful outlaws of the Wild West: Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid.

Knowing we couldn’t provide any new valuable historical evidence about the affable outlaw duo, we were more than just interested in ‘those guys’. Getting remotely close to Butch and Sundance left us one option – to ride horseback from the Mexican border to the Canadian line, visiting the most famous outlaw hideouts.

Our monumental ride culminated from seven years solid research, three previous riding vacations between driving an estimated 15,000 miles across nine States of America. In mid April 1999, a century after Butch and Sundance were at their peak, we attempted and completed an epic ride re-tracing their steps along the historic Outlaw Trail. For us personally it was a nostalgic journey through a changing West, reliving an element of a romantic and fascinating heroic action-packed era. What we saw and experienced will, in a few decades evaporate.

Ours was a tall order and we hoped to ride equally tall in the saddle. The principal disadvantage was that neither of us were ‘expert’ riders nor had we any experience packing and traveling with horses over long distances. Disregarding polite condemnation from pessimists and detractors alike we departed from Sierra de Cristo Rey where Texas, New and Old Mexico converge to follow our destiny north to Canada. We had no expectations, only a burning desire to complete the challenge. For over five months we tasted and cherished the freedom of horseback travel, and found a slice of the West that once was.

Not just a history of Butch and Sundance, we tell a no holds barred account of what it was like riding the Outlaw Trail. Sprinkled into the invigorating mix are undiluted wicked thoughts, displays of human selfishness, greed and duplicity, and the business of exploration. Included are important observations made by men who rode with Butch and Sundance, lawmen who chased them, banks, railroads and mining companies who were relieved of their funds by them, and newspapers who recorded their views at the time.