What famous outlaw committed the Wild West's first train robbery on July 21, 1873 in Adair, Iowa?
Train robbery stop or derail the train and then begin the holdup. Famous train robbers include Bill Miner, Jesse James, and Butch Cassidy. Jesse James is mistakenly thought to have completed the first successful train robbery in the American West when on July 21, 1873 the James-Younger Gang took US $3,000 from a Rock Island Railroad train after derailing it southwest of the town of Adair, Iowa. However, the first peacetime train robbery in the United States actually occurred on October 6, 1866, when robbers boarded the Ohio & Mississippi train shortly after it left Seymour, Indiana. They broke into one safe
James–Younger Gang in Illinois. Arthur McCoy had lived in this area and knew it quite well; he was likely involved and may have been the planner and leader. On July 21, 1873, the gang carried out what was arguably the first train robbery west of the Mississippi River, derailing a locomotive of the Rock Island Railroad near Adair, Iowa. Engineer John Rafferty died in the crash. The outlaws took $2,337 from the express safe in the baggage car, having narrowly missed a transcontinental express shipment of a large amount of cash. On November 24, John Newman Edwards published a lengthy glorification of