The Unassigned Lands
This book started out as research on the Wichita Mountains, which are generally located in Kiowa and Commanche Counties near present-day Lawton Oklahoma. Our family farm was in Kiowa County and I was intimate with the entire area, but sadly ignorant of the details of how Kiowa and Commanche Counties came to be.
As I dug deeper into the area's history it quickly became clear that trying to understand Southwestern Oklahoma outside the context of the rest of Oklahoma is hopeless. Then I discovered that my ignorance of the local area was eclipsed by my ignorance of Oklahoma's history in general. To my horror, what I really knew about my home state (and county, and town for that matter) could fit into a short paragraph. What I'd learned in school covered about 10% of the actual story...I needed to fix that.
I took a deep dive into the history of the land and the people. When I came back up, my goal had changed considerably: I would tell Oklahoma's story, as well as Kiowa County's, from the viewpoint of an obscure character in the region's most persistent legend: Jesse Jame's Mexican Gold. A side note in Jesse's Gold story, Bud Dalton was ephemeral, a mere shadow of a whisper and possibly unreal to begin with. The perfect person to tell the whole story and to connect all the dots. (Well, not the whole story, the editors made me cut a lot of interesting stuff. Scroll down to see how Bud gets involved and to set the stage for the tale.)
And there were a LOT of dots. The crooked politics of opening Oklahoma, Boomers and Sooners, Indians and Cattlemen, Marshals and villains of every persuasion play their roles. Then the extra complications of a gold rush in the Mountains and Bud's old outlaw buddies keep him on his toes. All of which, unfortunately for Bud, really happened.
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Again, thank you for your interest. I hope you enjoy The Unassigned Lands and maybe absorb a little Oklahoma history at the same time.
If you'd like to purchase a copy of The Unassigned Lands, both physical and digital versions are available on Amazon. Physical books should also be available in bookstores soon. However, you can also purchase a physical copy directly from the publisher (IndiePubs, click the button below to order). Plus, if you use the discount code SAVE20 the price is lower than Amazon's. Same book, shipped to you, just no distributor or middleman which gives authors a little lee-way on pricing. We help where we can.
Who was Bud Dalton, anyway?
That story begins in the 1870s when Jesse James made off with his largest heist ever: Mexican gold bullion. The James-Younger gang stole an entire mule train of gold bars in Mexico and fled north. They managed to escape across Texas to the Wichita Mountains, which was part of the Indian Territory. A blizzard was threatening and everyone was dead tired, so they buried the bars, ran off the mules, and snuck back to Missouri. Six months later, Jesse’s gang was wiped out in Northfield, Minnesota. Jesse survived only to be killed in Missouri, so the Mexican gold was never recovered.
Fast-forward to 1948 when a treasure hunter named Joe Hunter was excavating in the Wichita Mountains outside present-day Lawton, Oklahoma. Hunter was hoping to track down the Jesse's lost Mexican gold. He’d purchased some hand-drawn maps from a grizzled old miner who claimed they’d been left in his care by none other than Jesse James. The old man couldn’t make any sense of them and Joe was welcome to have them.
The maps led Hunter to Tarbone Mountain on the north side of the Wichitas where he claimed to have dug up an old brass bucket. Carved into it was a cryptic message “signed” by Jesse James that mentioned “this gold” and detailed the names of its owners: Jesse James, Frank James, Cole Younger, Frank Miller, George Overton, Will Overton, Rub Busse, Charlie Jones, “Uncle” George Payne, Roy Baxter, Zack Smith, and Bud Dalton.
Bud Dalton would have been minor character in the James Gang. He wasn’t present when the gang was massacred in Minnesota, and if Hunter’s bucket is legit then he was present when the bars were buried. Frank James was there, too, and after Frank was released from prison he moved to Lawton to retrieve some of Jesse's buried loot. There’s evidence he recovered some, but he never found the Mexican Gold. Why not? He was there…what happened? Rumors flew.
There was a lot brewing when Jesse buried the bars. The Indian Territory was under pressure to be opened for settlement, and that was a mess all by itself. There had always been rumors of gold and silver deposits in the Wichita Mountains which added an extra layer of conflict onto an already tense situation. Just as the Indian Territory was opening, a nationwide depression pushed the economy to the very brink of collapse. Millions were desperate and notion of “free” land, especially land that could hold gold and silver deposits, attracted many who were trying to escape economic doom in the East.
Bud would have been knowledgeable, present and motivated. What would a young, moderately impoverished, man do about a missing gold stash? The Unassigned Lands tells Bud's story.
About the Author
Ross Callen is an Oklahoma native and a graduate of the University of Oklahoma. The Unassigned Lands centers around the legend of Jesse James’ stolen Mexican gold and how Oklahoma came to exist in the first place, which is possibly not what you learned in school. Ross spent his summers in Kiowa County, Oklahoma, prowling the Wichita Mountains and absorbing the region’s chaotic history.
Ross lives with his wife and dog outside of Dallas, Texas,.