On this day, June 24, in 1889, Butch Cassidy robbed a bank in Telluride, Colo., the first major heist for the outlaw later romanticized as the Robin Hood of the West.
Cassidy and three cowboys made off with about $21,000 and escaped to Robbers Roost, a remote hide-out in Utah.
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By 1896, Cassidy recruited Harry Longabaugh, “The Sundance Kid,” and put together the longest streak of robberies in the West. Cassidy and Sundance retired to South America as ranchers but returned to a life of crime.
Some believe the duo was killed by Bolivian troops, but there is evidence that they returned to the United States.
The 1969 classic “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” was selected in 2004 for preservation by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
-Scott McCabe
