An Explosive Robbery

Two outlaws discovered how not to stick up a train.

On January 30, 1895, Joe George and Grant Wheeler, a couple of unemployed cowboys, held up the Southern Pacific near Willcox, AZ and tried to blow up the safe in the express car with dynamite. They packed too big a charge around it and blew the train car to splinters. Worse, they’d found several sacks of silver coins in the car and used them for ballast. When the dynamite exploded, silver pesos went flying all over southern Arizona. To make matters worse for the would-be desperadoes, when the smoke cleared, they discovered the safe was empty.