Elfego Baca & the Frisco Shootout (Encore)

The Wild West Extravaganza

Wild West Josh

History, Education

4.8 • 833 Ratings

🗓️ 20 August 2025

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In October of 1884, 19-year-old Elfego Baca made history during the legendary Frisco Shootout. After pinning on a fake badge and arresting a drunken cowboy named Charlie McCarty, Baca found himself surrounded by dozens of angry ranch hands. The standoff escalated into a 33-hour siege in which as many as 80 cowboys fired more than 4,000 rounds into the adobe building where Baca took cover. Remarkably, not a single bullet struck him. Acquitted of murder on multiple occasions and later serving as sheriff, U.S. marshal, lawyer, and politician, Baca became a folk hero of the New Mexico frontier. Buy Me A Coffee – https://buymeacoffee.com/wildwest Check out the website for more true tales from the Old West https://www.wildwestextra.com/ Email me! https://www.wildwestextra.com/contact/ Free Newsletter! https://wildwestjosh.substack.com/ Join Patreon for ad-free and bonus content! https://www.patreon.com/wildwestextra Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	In the fall of 1884, a teenager named Elfago Baca was involved in one of the most lopsided
0:05.2	shootouts in all of the Old West.
0:07.6	It was just him by himself against 60 hard cases.
0:11.0	And when the smoke cleared, Elfago was still standing.
0:14.0	Baca would then go on to be tried for murder on multiple occasions.
0:17.4	He was involved with the Mexican Revolution.
0:19.1	He worked as a sheriff, a lawyer, private investigator, speak easy bouncer, and even a school superintendent. And as late as 1915, at the ripe old age of 50, Baca was still getting into gunfights. According to one biographer, Elphago was controversial. He drank too much, he talked too much, he had a weakness for wild
0:38.3	women, was often arrogant, and showed absolutely no compunction when it came to taking a life.
0:43.9	Quote, if a man had it in mind to kill me, I made it my business to kill him first. End of
0:49.3	quote. Who was Elfago Baca? Out of skinny teenager with a fake badge come out on top against such an overwhelming force.
0:57.2	And is it true that Poncho Vio once put out a $30,000 bounty on Baca's head?
1:02.2	Stick around and find out. By the way, what you're about to hear was originally recorded way back in May of 2021.
1:08.3	I had a few minor setbacks this week, as well as some pretty pressing obligations.
1:12.9	So unfortunately, I was not able to complete the second installment in the Chief Joseph series.
1:18.5	I didn't want to leave you hanging, though, so I thought I'd go ahead and reshare today's story.
1:22.7	And yeah, we will continue on with the saga of Chief Joseph next Wednesday.
1:27.5	All right, without further ado, let's dive into the extraordinary life of El Phaegro Baca.
1:32.4	My name's Josh, and this is the Wild West extravaganza.
1:51.1	Elfago Baca was born in February of 1865 in the central New Mexico town of Socorro.
1:57.4	His parents, Francisco, and Juana Maria would move the family to Kansas just a couple of years after Elfago's birth,
2:01.7	affording Baca a better education than a boy could then get down New Mexico away. I did find a source claiming that El Fago was kidnapped by Native Americans at the age of one
2:07.2	and then quickly returned to his parents, something he himself allegedly would claim was yet
	...

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