THE GANG’S ALL HERE
Near noon on Jan. 8, 1874, five masked bandits swooped down on an eastbound stage some 3 miles west of Arcadia, Louisiana. While the robbers rifled through mailbags and the passengers’ pockets, the westbound coach of the Monroe & Shreveport Stage Line approached. Forcing it to stop as well, the thieves added to their bounty. Was this double stagecoach robbery the work of the infamous James-Younger Gang, whose home base was Missouri?
The road traversing north Louisiana from the Mississippi River to Texas served as a major thoroughfare to the West in the 1800s and became known as the Traveler’s Road or Wire Road. During the Civil War supplies funneled through Mexico found their way east on the road, while fleeing families herded livestock and slaves west.
Prior to the war a railroad had extended its line west from Vicksburg, Miss., to Monroe, La., with the intent of linking up with Shreveport, but the conflict interrupted the project. The lean years of Reconstruction further delayed extension of the rails. To span the gap between the Ouachita and Red rivers, the same men who ran the railroad operated a stagecoach line, providing the only commercial conveyance between Monroe and Shreveport, a distance of more than 100 miles.
The Monroe & Shreveport Stage Line operated until 1883 when the Vicksburg, Shreveport & Pacific Railroad finally opened, nine years after America’s best-known badmen might have struck in Louisiana.
One robber stepped in the road to stop the Monroe-bound stage, while his companions hid in
