Who was Bud Dalton, anyway?
That story begins in 1948 with a treasure hunter named Joe Hunter. Joe was excavating in the Wichita Mountains outside present-day Lawton, Oklahoma, hoping to track down the James Gang's lost Mexican gold. The story is the same - 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, Jesse James was long dead, 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.
Thus, 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. But that inscription is the only evidence that "Bud Dalton" ever existed. Dalton is a common name, and "Bud" is still a common nickname with no base name - anyone can be a 'Bud'. There are a few appearances of 'Bud Daltons' over the years, but nothing connected to the gold story.
In an interesting coincidence, one of the primary members of the James Gang, Cole Younger, was related by marriage to a Dalton. The James Gang routinely included family members in their raids, so it's reasonable to wonder if Bud Dalton might have been connected there. Sadly, no. Cole Younger's Daltons are none other than the infamous Dalton Gang, and they are very well documented in the census. There was no Bud Dalton there. Perhaps a relative of an outlaw Dalton? Again, no. Nancy B. Samuelson, a Dalton historian, traced the various branches of the Dalton family tree in The Dalton Gang Story: Lawmen to Outlaws and produced no 'Buds'.
But wait, there's more: about the same time that Joe Hunter was making headlines with his bucket in Lawton, a grizzled old man named J. Frank Dalton turned up claiming to be Jesse James. After some scrutiny, the conclusion was that J. Frank was not Jesse James, although he might have known Jesse at some point. Perhaps he could be the "Bud Dalton" on the bucket? Yet again, no. Samuelson gave quite a bit of attention to J. Frank and dismissed him as a fraud, which seemed to be the consensus in the '40's, too. Jesse's surviving relatives were aware of J. Frank and scoffed at his claims. There's not any evidence his name was even "Dalton" and he was certainly not our Bud.
So, what we have is "Bud Dalton" connected to Jesse James , the Mexican Gold legend, and the Wichita Mountains through Joe's bucket, assuming the bucket is real. Either way, Bud is the perfect person to guide us through The Unassigned Lands: He would have been knowledgeable, present and motivated. What would a young outlaw do about a missing gold stash? The Unassigned Lands tells the story.
