Hay Meadow Massacre

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Hay meadow at Wild Horse Lake
Hay meadow at Wild Horse Lake

The Hay Meadow Massacre, July 25, 1888, was the most violent event of the Stevens County, Kansas, county seat fight.

In July 1888, Sam Robinson, the marshal of Hugoton and a group of men supporting Hugoton for the county seat planned an outing in No Man's Land just south of the county. Ed Short, the marshal of Woodsdale and Woodsdale supporter, learned of the outing and gathered some men of the opposing faction. They caught up with Robinson, but he escaped. Short feeling they needed more help, sent for reinforcements. Sheriff John M. Cross, also a Woodsdale booster, and four others headed out to search for the Hugoton party. Not finding them, they camped for the night on a hay meadow at Wild Horse Lake.

Meanwhile, Robinson's friends had organized a group of Hugoton supporters with the intentions of rescuing him. They met Robinson and returned to the strip. Locating the Woodsdale camp at the hay meadow, they surrounded the Sheriff's party and killed four of them and injured the fifth. The Hugoton party, thinking they had killed all of Woodsdale group, returned saying that they had killed the party in a shootout. However, the surviving member and a group of haymakers that witnessed the event stated that the Woodsdale party had been captured, disarmed, and executed.

The state militia was called out and the Hugoton men arrested, but it soon turned out that no court had jurisdiction in No Man's Land. Eventually the case was tried before the United States Court for the Eastern District of Texas, at Paris (United States v. C. E. Cook. Orin Cook, Capt. C. E. Frease, Johnnie Jackson, Ed Boudin, John Colbert, Et. al.). Seven men were convicted of murder and sentenced to death. On appeal, however, the Supreme Court held that the Paris court had no jurisdiction and no sentence was carried out.

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