In a time and place teeming with miners desperate to strike it rich in the gold rush, the slow-moving stagecoach filled with other men's fortunes was often a temptation too great to resist. The treasure-laden express box quickly became a favorite target among road agents, making stagecoach robbery an enduring part of the mythology of the Old West.

William Brazleton was bold enough to elude authorities - for a time, anyway - by reversing the direction of his steed's horseshoes. Arizona's "petticoat bandit" Pearl Hart liked to rob her stagecoaches with a polite and ladylike .38 caliber revolver. And the last stagecoach robber on the frontier was practically caught red-handed - his bloody palm print being the first used as evidence in a U.S. criminal prosecution.

Great Stagecoach Robberies of the Old West tells the stories of hauls too large, murders too cold-blooded, and bandits too eccentric to fade into obscurity.