By the 1890s, it looked as if the West, in general, was becoming a little less wild.

Thirty years of westward expansion after the Civil War brought sweeping changes to the frontier.

Most of the old legendary outlaws were dead or had moved on to new phases of their lives.

Railroads crisscrossed the West, and telephones

were starting to replace the telegraph in a few places. By 1890, the federal government's

census officially declared the frontier gone. The declaration was a little ambitious, because

it was not gone in the Kansas-Oklahoma region.

The Dalton gang, one of the last prominent outlaw gangs of the West, became headline news in May of 1891.

But the gang's crime spree, for all its headlines and craziness, only lasted a year and a half.

Four core members were killed in the Coffeyville

raid in October 1892, and a fifth was captured and sent to prison. Less than a month afterward,

Bill Doolin, one of the early members of the Dalton gang, picked up the pieces and continued the spree.

Three members of the new gang, called the D and continued the spree.

Three members of the new gang called the Doolin Dalton gang, also known as the Wild

Bunch, robbed a bank in the tiny town of Spearville, Kansas.

Seven months later, members of the gang hijacked a train outside Simmeron, Kansas.

Three months after that came the big showdown in the village of Ingalls, Oklahoma.

On September 1st, a posse of lawmen, led by a group of deputy U.S. Marshals, confronted

at least six outlaws in Ingalls.

During a fierce firefight, multiple people died, including three deputy marshals, but all of

the gang members survived.

One was captured and sent to prison, but the rest remained free.

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