Ben Thorn

When one thinks of the lawmen of the Old West, such figure as Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Wild Bill Hickok and Pat Garrett come to  mind.  Each of them established their reputations as peace officers long after the California Gold Rush.

The Gold Rush not only produced America's most violent frontier, it also produced some of the frontier's finest lawmen.  But few western peace officers could match the skill, daring, and longevity of Ben Thorn, the iron-willed lawman of Calaveras County.

Ben Thorn served continuously as a law officer in Calaveras County from 1855 until his retirement almost half a century later, in 1903.  During his long career he captured scores of dangerous outlaws including the mankiller "Longhair Sam" Brown, and in 1883 played a prominent role in the manhunt for Charles E. Boles, alias Black Bart, America's most prolific stagecoach robber.  He took part in numerous hair-raising gun battles, and superstitious Mexicans and Indians came to believe that he led a charmed life and that no knife or bullet could kill him.

Benjamin Kent Thorn was born in Plattsburg, New York, on December 22 1829.  In 1849 he joined the Gold Rush to California.  He began mining on the Yuba River in the Northern Mines, but by 1850 he drifted south to the diggings in Calaveras County where he would spend the rest of his life.

Ned Bushyhead, constable of El Dorado Mining District in 1850's worked with Ben Thorn in law enforcement may times.  He was the lead man in capture of Bill Holt, a well known outlaw in the McKinney Diggins - Cave City area.  They worked together on many jobs including the hanging in old El Dorado December 1864, and the stage coach hold-up in 1892.

Ben Thorn's first law enforcement experience began in the spring of 1853, when, like hundreds of other miners in Calaveras County, he helped search for the rampaging gang of bandidos led by Joaquin Murrieta.

Ben Thorn soon became noted for reckless bravado, and on April 15, 1855, Charles A. Clarke, sheriff of Calaveras County, appointed him a deputy.

It was not long before the young Deputy Thorn tackled one of the worst bands of toughs in the gold region.  Their leader was Longhair Sam Brown.  San Brown fled Mariposa and soon turned up in Calaveras County at the head of a band of gamblers and hardcases.  On July 8, 1855, while running a monte game in Upper Calaveritas, Longhair Sam and a comrade, Hugh "Bunty" Owens, got into a row with several gamblers.

A bystander raced to Ben Thorn's mining claim at San Antonio camp and reported the killings.  Thorn, after obtaining warrants for the arrest of Brown and Owens, started after the killers with a fellow miner, Ed Hopkins.  They rode all night in search and by daybreak learned that the bad men were holed up with four other members of the gang in a cabin on O'Neill Creek.

Thorn and Hopkins took the pair to a sawmill on San Antonio Creek owned by Orrin Spencer, the justice of the peace.

Within a few months after his capture of San Brown, Ben Thorn was again in the saddle after dangerous outlaws.  On August 6, 1855, in the so-called Rancheria Tragedy, a gang of Hispanic bandits raided the mining camp of Rancheria in Amador County, just north of Calaveras.

There they learned that Calaveras County Sheriff Charles Clarke had caught up with the mounted bandits at Texas Bar on the Calaveras River.  Clarke and his men, one of whom was undoubtedly Ben Thorn, had engaged the bandidos in a sharp gunfight and managed to shoot and capture one of them.

One of Ben Thorn's most notable exploits was his encounter with Santiago Molino, a dangerous desperado who reported to have killed six men in the mining country.  Ben trailed and killed Molino.
Just a few of the many exploits of Ben Thorn, a true Western Lawman.

After the Gold Rush many forty-niners drifted on to new mining frontiers.  Ben Thorn, however, stayed, married built a mansion (which is still standing) in San Andreas, raised two daughters and became a power in local politics.

He served as undersheriff for Sheriff Bob Paul from 1860 to 1864 and was sheriff of Calaveras County from 1868 to 1876, then worked as a Wells, Fargo detective, and again was county sheriff from 1880 to 1903.

During the 1880's and 1890's he was, next to his friend Tom Cunningham of Stockton, the most famous sheriff in California.  When he died on November 15, 1905,, the San Francisco Call gave simple but elegant praise:  "In the days when laws were loose, when the bandit, the stage robber, and the horse thief abounded, when life was cheap and men lived in the frontier stage of existence, Thorn's name was a terror to the criminal."