This fascinating document is an account of the notorious "road agents" operating in Montana in the early 1860s during and after the Alder Gulch gold strike. These men took over the towns of Alder Creek, Virginia City and Bannock and ran them as criminal enterprises. Eventually groups of ordinary citizens formed secret vigilante organizations to combat the road agents. Taking the law into their own hands they pursued, shot or hanged as many of the road agents as possible. On Virginia City's Boot Hill there are presently gravemarkers with the names of a number of the men mentioned in the book who were captured and hanged by the vigilantes. Dimsdale, the author, was born in England and took over editorship of the Virginia City paper. Some of the events he witnessed, but more he relates from the testimony of those who participated in them. The accounts are a bit confusing -- they read as newspaper reports and lack a historian's distance and clarity. But they make up for all faults in the immediacy of their telling. This is a very valuable document of life in the old west, and gives an extraordinary sense of what life was like in a raw mining town, too new to have any legitimate law enforcement. Mark Twain cites Dimsdale and quotes him copiously in "Roughing It," his account of his adventures in Carson City, Nevada, and other places in the West.

Dimsdale writes of Montana history in a clarity not often appreciated by some history authors. "The Vigilantes of Montana" brings, page after page, the gold-rush era of Montana Territory to the memory and eyes of the reader. This fascinating text tells the story as my ancestors told of living in Montana during this period. It is an excellent choice for any reader interested in a true account of the romantic and hostile West.

Although Dimsdale professes only an "intimate acquaintance with parties cognizant of the facts related.", there far too many instances where he recalls minute particulars of an incident and/or corrects the contemporary accounts of the vigilantes' exploits. Another fact is, that his status as an "educated Englishman" would have made him an ideal candidate for a group such as the vigilantes. He would have been an important asset in maintaining their credibility with the public. I'm a writer myself and know by the sheer quantity of minute details related, it could only have come from witnessing, and not merely from transcribing. I guess you could get away with that in the early 1860s'. This is a first-person account! And, a great book! Earl Swinhart