Thomas Logan was raised by his parents to be an upstanding, honest man. In 1864, Robert and Mary Logan opened Logan House near Glenbrook at Lake Tahoe. It is a beautiful location — now called Logan Shoals — but the business failed in less than two years. The family moved to southern Nevada where Mary died in 1882, six months after giving birth to their seventh child. Robert hired 23-year-old Hannah Hamblin to cook, clean and help raise the kids.
“Sheriff Logan was called to the scene, pushed his way to the center of the fray, caught [Wyatt] Earp by the arm and, without raising his voice, talked Earp into giving up his guns…Logan did not know what fear was.”
Hamblin was a practicing Mormon who kept a strict house. She was the niece of Jacob Hamblin, a missionary and active but honest broker between Great Basin Native Americans and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Like her uncle, Hamblin was energetic, strong-minded and industrious. Tom Logan, age 21 at the time, was a strapping 6 feet 4 inches tall, with broad shoulders and muscular physique. He soon fell in love with his attractive Mormon caretaker. The feeling was mutual, and they were married in the spring of 1883. The newlyweds soon moved to Arizona Territory and over the next 20 years they were blessed with eight children.
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Like many youngsters raised on the American frontier, Logan was home-schooled. His parents ingrained a strong work ethic in their children and because of Robert Logan’s career as a justice of the peace, the personal obligation to stand up against injustice. Tom’s education also included an extensive background in law and legal matters, but in northwest Arizona Territory he could only find work as a ranch hand and as a clerk in a grocery store. He saved his earnings and over the course of time he was able to acquire a small cattle ranch. In 1892, the Logan’s sold their cattle spread and moved back to Nevada settling in Monitor Valley in Nye County where Logan continued the physically hard work of raising beef.
People liked and respected Logan and in 1897 he served briefly as a justice of the peace. Late the next year, he ran for sheriff of Nye County and defeated the incumbent Charles McGregor by just seven votes: 120 to 113. Nye County is a huge territory, the largest in Nevada, totaling more than 18,000 square miles. That’s about the size of New Jersey, Massachusetts, Delaware and Rhode Island combined. Sheriff Logan was the chief law-enforcement officer in the entire district and also the tax assessor. His official responsibilities took him to every corner of the county. In good weather it took him eight days to cross it by horse and buggy.
When Tom moved to Monitor Valley in 1892, he met James L. Butler who owned a hay ranch in the valley. Curiously, Butler’s middle name was Logan, but apparently there were no family ties. Butler had spent his early childhood years in the California gold fields before moving to Nevada as a young man where he lived in the mining camps of White Pine, Austin and Eureka. Forty years later his obsession with mining life and the lure of instant wealth hadn’t faded. Despite the challenges of running a ranch and his part-time job as Nye County District Attorney that paid $35 a month, “Big Jim” Butler was well-known for his proclivity for mineral prospecting.
In what may be an apocryphal tale, on May 19, 1900, one of the 45-year-old prospector’s burros sought protection from a cold wind and wandered from camp. He found his mule on a nearby mountain ledge that Butler discovered was rich in silver. Butler’s strike gave birth to Tonopah, a Western Shoshone Indian word for a desert shrub. Before long the rush was on and Tonopah became known as Queen of the Silver Camps; Butler became a millionaire tycoon.
With Butler’s silver discovery at Tonopah — soon to be the population center and county seat in Nye County — hundreds of miners, workers, entrepreneurs, vagabonds, card sharks and worse poured into the district. It was the first major mineral strike in Nevada since the demise of the Comstock. It ended a 20-year economic depression and the surge of people upended the slow growth of the region. The rate of lawlessness soared, as well; in 1901 there were 22 criminal cases prosecuted. In 1904, the total approached 1,000. Stout and dependable, Logan was the right man in the right place at the right time. He was re-elected sheriff of Nye County in a landslide. A new jail was built and the town’s start-up newspaper, the Tonopah Bonanza, stated that on release “former inmates best hike themselves to more enticing climes.”
Tonopah’s population eclipsed 1,500 in 1901, so Sheriff Logan opened a saloon to capitalize on the classic American frontier desires for alcohol, gambling and prostitution. It was common in the Wild West for lawmen to operate such businesses. Logan’s Mormon wife Hannah, however, objected strongly to the decision. While her husband envisioned a steady income, she saw only trouble. At that time, one of Tonopah’s many other saloons was co-owned by the legendary — even then — lawman and gambler, Wyatt Earp. Earp has a well-deserved resume as a brave man of action, but he’s best known for the 1881 shootout at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Ariz.
Earp had his own problems with old demon alcohol, but Logan was as cool as they came. The Tonopah Daily Sun newspaper reported: “One night Earp became drunk, and his wife [Josie] came to the place he was drinking and tried to get him to go home. The man slapped her face by way of reply, and the act roused the ire of a young miner who was also drinking…A fierce altercation followed, and Earp rushed out of the place to his own saloon down the street…and came back with two big six-shooters swinging in his hands and breathing blood and sudden death for the man who had defied him. Sheriff Logan was called to the scene, pushed his way to the center of the fray, caught Earp by the arm and, without raising his voice, talked Earp into giving up his guns…Logan did not know what fear was, and he always tried to stop trouble by peaceful means, although there was no better hand with a gun in this country than he.”
No doubt Sheriff Logan was a badass and it seemed that the capable lawman had everything under control: his profession, business and family. But changes were afoot. Stay tuned for the conclusion in the next edition and at TheTahoeWeekly.com.
