In the summer of 1902, Nye County Sheriff Tom Logan disarmed a drunk gunman named Wyatt Earp in Tonopah, Nev. Given Earp’s reputation and temper, the bloodless outcome occurred primarily because the two men were friends and both owned saloons. Logan was also backed up by his younger brothers Frank and George that night, both peace officers themselves. But Tonopah residents viewed Tom Logan as invincible. Word of the encounter spread through the territory, cementing Logan’s reputation as an implacable lawman.
Sheriff Logan’s success at law enforcement was a key reason for Tonopah’s stature as a rare frontier mining town where crime was well-controlled.
Sheriff Logan’s success at law enforcement was a key reason for Tonopah’s stature as a rare frontier mining town where crime was well-controlled. Riding a groundswell of admiration and respect, Logan ran for a third term as sheriff in the fall of 1902. In this election his main challenger was a 28-year-old miner who had no experience as a peace officer but did have the crucial backing of the local miners’ union. James Cushing, from Wisconsin, argued that Logan represented an old-fashioned past, at a time when modernization was sweeping the West. At the dawn of the 20th Century, automobiles were replacing horsedrawn buggies and industrialization was transforming mining, milling and transportation. Tonopah’s population and economy were booming, but newly elected officials would have significant challenges in expanding municipal services for the rapidly growing community.
It was a tight race, but Logan lost the election by six votes — nearly the same difference that first elected him to the office in 1898. Cushing’s success didn’t last long, however, after he was widely blamed for failing to protect Tonopah’s Chinese community from a union mob attack that killed an Asian washhouse operator. Sheriff Cushing also seemed to shield certain criminals from arrest and trial. After supporting Cushing’s campaign, on Sept. 26, 1903, the Tonopah Bonanza lamented: “The sheriff has proven his utter unworthiness to hold the responsible position which he occupies…his actions tend to reflect discredit on the county and people, it is time to call a halt, and sentiment must give way to the demands of right and justice.”
In the meantime, Logan stayed busy. He remodeled his saloon, invested in promising mining operations and even dabbled in law enforcement for Sheriff Cushing. After an October 1903 jailbreak in Belmont, about 50 miles northeast of Tonopah, the Bonanza observed: “Word was received from Belmont Thursday night that Welsh and Johnson Smith, two prisoners confined in the county jail in Belmont, made their escape by cutting through the outer brick wall of that building. The men’s enjoyment of liberty, however, was brief, as on the following day they were caught in Jefferson Canyon, 15 miles from Belmont, by ex-Sheriff Tom Logan and John McCann.” It appears that Logan’s old-fashioned methods still had value after all.
Tonopah’s silver mines kept producing and the settlement became one of the most modern cities in Nevada. The narrow-gauge Tonopah Railroad arrived in July 1904 to much celebration. By 1905 the town boasted telegraph and telephone connections, paved sidewalks and electric lights and 16-passenger automobile stages that quickly connected travelers with nearby mining communities in Goldfield, Belmont, Rhyolite and Manhattan. The Salt Lake Tribune claimed that Tonopah had “every comfort obtainable even in a city the size of New York.” But along with the amenities came crime.
Despite his earlier setback, Logan decided to run for the sheriff-assessor position again. His opponent was State Assemblyman Tom McCabe. The Tonopah press considered both men to be equally qualified candidates, but this time Logan won by a wide margin. Still, the Bonanza wondered if even Logan could hold the line against the invasion of men streaming to Nye County’s thriving mining camps.
In March 1906, Sheriff Logan rushed to Berlin due to disputes between Portuguese, Italian and Basque workers. Berlin’s solitary mining company had decided to replace its Portuguese laborers with Basque men, which led to violence. Logan arrived with six deputies, rounded up dozens of men and disarmed them. Nearly 30 Basque migrant workers were arrested, tried and fined, before being kicked out of town. Logan’s bold actions attracted national acclaim for averting what was being called Nevada’s race war.
Tom and Hannah’s eight children were growing up; their three eldest daughters were attending business school in California. But Tom had strayed in his marital relationship. On the evening of April 6, 1906, he was relaxing in a private room at a Manhattan brothel called Jewel. Word was that Tom was in a sexual relationship with May Biggs, the madam of this bordello. At dawn the next morning, Biggs asked one of her customers to leave as the transaction had been completed. Instead of complying, Walter Barieau violently grabbed her wrists and forced Biggs to her knees; she screamed. The commotion woke Logan who ran unarmed to the parlor dressed in a nightshirt. Logan marched the fuming Barieau down the hall, out the front door and into the street. While Logan stood weaponless in the doorway, Barieau pulled a gun and fired, shattering a windowpane next to Logan. Incensed, Logan rushed Barieau who shot him five times at point-blank range before the sheriff took him down.
The piano player at the Jewel retrieved Logan’s loaded revolver from his room and ran to the front door. As he leveled the weapon at Barieau, the mortally wounded lawman laying in a pool of blood ordered the musician to hold his fire: “No more shooting! The county court will administer justice.”
Sheriff Logan died two hours later from a ruptured artery. At a coroner’s hearing that night, Barieau pleaded not guilty, but rumors of a lynching by angry townsfolk alarmed officers who quickly escorted the killer to the county jail at Tonopah.
Barieau, a troublesome gambler, was well-known to California police. He retained two defense attorneys, one of whom was future Nevada Senator Pat McCarran from Reno. McCarran slandered Sheriff Logan’s reputation by linking him to prostitutes, denigrated testimony by eyewitnesses at the brothel and denied Barieau’s frequent run-ins with the law. On July 13, 1906, Barieau was declared innocent and set free. It was a travesty of justice, but the McCarran miracle launched McCarran’s political career in the Silver State.
More than a century later, in May 2011, the Nye County’s sheriff’s office posthumously awarded Logan the department’s Purple Heart and Medal of Valor. A hero had been restored. The day after his killing, a Manhattan newspaper had written: “A model sheriff, a good citizen, Sheriff Logan was a man who was a benefit to the world in which he lived.”
To learn more, read Jackie Boor’s book “Logan: The Honorable Life & Scandalous Death of a Western Lawman.”
