In Old El Paso,
tempered justice and politics were seldom practiced with a public courtroom and
debate hall. It was often practiced with
bare knuckles and revolvers, usually with deadly consequences. A visitor at the town saloon experienced El
Paso justice firsthand by trying to break up a saloon fight. The saloonkeeper calmly informed him “when
you see anything of that kind going on in El Paso, don’t interfere. It is not considered good manners here.” Though gentle in manner, the saloonkeeper
presented a wise, authoritative figure enhanced by his unusual white hair and
long beard. Affectionately referred to
as “Uncle Ben,” Benjamin Dowell brought a rough sense of growth and order to a
remote corner of Texas.
In the late 1840’s,
El Paso, Texas was a small, unincorporated community north of the Rio Grande
across from El Paso del Norte, now present day Juarez. Often referred to as Franklin, its most
dominate establishment was a collection of white adobe buildings referred to as
the Ponce Ranch, established by a wealthy El Paso del Norte merchant, Juan
Maria Ponce De Leon. The living quarters
were surrounded by high walls for protection against Indian raids, ocassionally
breached when the Indians shot their arrows over the walls. Among the ranch employees was Ben Dowell, a
former U.S. cavalryman who had spent eight months in Mexico City as a prisoner
of war. Conditions were poor at best;
the prison diet consisted of tortillas purchased through donations from the
prison guards, who were just as poor as the prisoners they guarded. In his late twenties, he came out of prison
with white hair and a fluency in Spanish.
After the Mexican War, he returned to his home state of Kentucky,
divorced his wife, and headed for Texas.
In dire need of employment, Dowell got a job at the Ponce Ranch tending
the ranch’s vineyards. He also married,
for the second and final time, an illiterate Tigua Indian woman named Juana
Marquez. Stricken with “gold fever,”he
headed for California, briefly settling in Los Angeles and working as a
carpenter with a fellow West Texan, Bill Ford. Even by El Paso standards, Los Angeles
was too violent to raise a family,
Dowell decided to return to Texas.
In 1850, Dowell
opened El Paso’s first saloon in one of the Ponce Ranch buildings. De Leon sold
his ranch to a local freighter before Dowell purchased it in 1853. Like many frontier Texas towns, Dowell’s Saloon served many functions, such
as a billiard hall, post office, grocery store, and courthouse. High stakes poker was played with silver
coins and thousands won or lost in a single hand. Food was brought to the players if games
lasted through the night. Overseeing it
all was Ben Dowell.
Like all frontier
saloons, gunfights were bound to happen.
In 1855, Dowell himself became involved in a shooting. The theft of $2,300 from the town custom
house and a horse from Dowell’s residence brought accusations against William
McElroy and three others. Dowell called
out McElroy directly for the theft, something McElroy didn’t take well after he
had a few drinks. In San Elizario, a
town southeast of EI Paso, McElroy spilled his intentions to kill Ben Dowell to
the town’s saloonkeeper, Bill Ford - Dowell’s California buddy. Ford sent a message by courier on a swift
horse to his friend, warning him of McElroy.
Dowell was ready; he felled McMcElroy with a shotgun blast after the
would-be assassin entered his saloon.
Later, another gunslinger was dispatched after taking potshots at El
Paso legislator Jeff Hall in front of Dowell’s Saloon. Armed vigilantes cornered him behind a hotel
before showering him with bullets. There were no probations or lengthy jail
sentences, law was enforced through the barrel of a gun.
The Civil War
brought further disruption. In 1861,
Texas seceded from the Union. A
Confederate flag flew over Dowell’s establishment, leaving no doubt as to which
side he supported. A failed Confederate
invasion of New Mexico led to occupation by Union troops, forcing residents to
flee to San Antonio or across the river to El Paso del Norte. The saloon’s fixtures and billiard tables
were taken across the river and used in an El Paso del Norte bar. After leaving
his family in Mexico, Dowell served as a Confederate recruiting officer in
Galveston.
After the war,
former Confederates had their property confiscated, forcing them to stroke
politicians or seek redress from courts of law to get it back. In McDowell’s case, it didn’t hurt if those
politicians were in the same Masonic order or were friends before the war. Dowell got his property back while El Paso’s
started to grow. Dowell’s Saloon added
two more functions - stagecoach stopover and livery for travelers heading from
San Antonio to San Diego, a sort of latter-day Buc-ee’s.
Unlike the war,
the violence never subsided.
Reconstruction politics became the new flashpoint. Democratic politicians were replaced with
Republicans who favored the Union side during the war. The Republican Party had two factions: Radicals, who favored a progressive approach,
such as equal rights for former slaves, and Conservatives, who favored the
opposite. In 1868, customs collector W.
W. Mills, the son-in-law of Texas Governor A. J Hamilton, was El Paso’s
Conservative representative at the constitutional convention in Austin. During his absence, Albert Fountain took over
Republican interests in El Paso. On the
local ticket for state senator, Mills ran against the radical Fountain - Mills
lost. With the new office came the power
to appoint friends and relatives to judicial and law enforcement posts. Frank Williams, an El Paso lawyer and friend
of Mills, lost his chance at a judgeship when Fountain appointed Gaylord Clarke
instead. To assuage his disappointment,
Williams began drinking heavily at Dowell’s Saloon. In addition, he showed scant respect for the
new judge when pleading his cases and vowed vengeance against Fountain and his
cronies. Things only grew worse from
there.
On December 6,
1870, while Williams was drinking, Albert Fountain approached him at Dowell’s
Saloon to discuss Williams’ less than respectful attitude. In response, Williams pulled out his pistol
and shot Fountain three times, hitting him in the left arm, scalp and almost
his heart before the bullet deflected off his pocket watch. Williams fled to his house to reload while
Fountain gathered a posse, Judge Clarke included. They surrounded Williams’ abode and began
breaking in the door. Williams emerged
from the doorway with a double-barreled shotgun, shooting Clarke dead. Fountain killed Williams with one rifle shot,
ending the dispute.
In 1872, El Paso
decided it needed a city government. Ben
Dowell was elected its first mayor. His
saloon became the first city hall. Among
the new city’s vexing problems were tax collections, clean water, and stray
dogs. Dowell’s main problem was more of
an international one - the Rio Grande.
After a severe flood in 1864, the river changed course, leaving three
hundred acres of Mexican land now in the United States. Mexico wanted that land back. Mayor Dowell
felt the matter should be resolved by the United States and Mexico instead of
locally. The matter was not resolved
until a century later when President John F. Kennedy and Mexico’s President
Adolfo Lopez Mateos agreed to give 630 acres back to Mexico and Mexico would
give 193 acres to the United States. As
a result, 5,500 El Pasoans had to move to other parts of the city.
After being a
mayor, Dowell was a county commissioner and city alderman while still tending
his bar. He died unexpectedly in
1880. The saloon continued operating
after his widow leased it out to Frank Manning and his brothers, all well known
gunfighters. El Paso had become a city
but it was still under the cloud of its wild frontier past.
