(COLORADO SPRINGS) — Before Colorado Springs was a mecca for leaf-peeping or home to military installations, General William Jackson Palmer envisioned the town under Pikes Peak as a health resort for the dry climate and crisp mountain air. But, as westward expansion gave way to industrialism and gold rushes, what was originally referred to as Colorado City acted somewhat as a gateway to the new West and mining camps of the central Rocky Mountains. This meant that Colorado Springs saw an ever-increasing number of people passing through, bandits and outlaws included. Namely, the Lewis-Jones Gang made a notably tumultuous visit through the Springs over 100 years ago.
According to the National Centers for Environmental Information, September 1918 was particularly brisk in Colorado, with an average temperature of 54.8 degrees in the Springs. The temperatures would’ve been dropping for the day as afternoon passed under the mountain’s watchful eyes while a Marmon automobile carrying bandits rolled through Colorado Springs.
The crew, headed by outlaws notorious at the time, Frank Lewis and Dale Jones, were on the run from a train robbery they pulled in Kansas the previous July. Reports from the Colorado Springs Gazette and the Herald Democrat confirm that police had sent information about the Lewis-Jones gang to gas stations across the state in hopes of catching the criminals. The Gazette reported that around noon on Sept. 12, the Denver Police Department (DPD) told the Colorado Springs Police Department (CSPD) that a suspicious Marmon car was spotted on the road to Colorado Springs, prompting CSPD to prepare for a run-in with the outlaws.
The next day, Sept. 13, the car, with the trio of gang leader Dale Jones, his 17-year-old wife Margie Dean, and Roscoe Lancaster inside, stopped to refuel at the Pikes Peak Filling Station on the corner of Colorado Avenue and Nevada Avenue just hours after the station received CSPD’s alert of the criminals possibly being in the area. While filling up the Marmon, Frank Henderson, an employee at the filling station, alerted CSPD after he recognized the car and the gang within.
Henderson’s call sprang CSPD into action, with Chief of Detectives John W. Rowan leading a small group of officers, Detective F.A. Miller of Denver’s Pinkerton Bureau, and even a local pharmacist to bring in these dangerous thugs. Detective Rowan’s posse reportedly sped down an alley between Nevada Ave. and South Weber Street to catch the bandits from behind. At the same time, CSPD Chief of Police Hugh D. Harper took a police car down Nevada Ave. with Officer Tom Shockley to head Lewis and his cohorts off.
Chief Detective Rowan and his team were the first to arrive, but when they ordered those inside the Marmon car to hold up their hands, they were met with the raucous bellow of revolver fire. Officer John Riley, another of the small posse with Detective Rowan, quickly stepped behind a pillar at the gas station and fired his revolver into the cargo area in the back of the car. At the same time, Detective Rowan fired a shot into Lancaster, who was sitting in the back seat of the car, before moving up near the car’s passenger’s side…