CHAPTER 1

Meet Sam Howe

"Sam House will get you if you don't be good."

Such was the admonishment directed towardmischievous youngsters by exasperated parentsduring the decades when Sam Howe wasone of the two most famous "coppers" in Colorado—theother being David J. Cook. Dave Cook wasdaring and chased crooks and then wrote a book abouthis adventures, titled Hands Up; or, Twenty Tears ofDetective Life in the Mountains and on the Plains. Subsequently,Cook was the subject of a biography by WilliamRoss Collier and Edwin Victor Westrate calledDave Cook of the Rockies. Sam Howe wrote no booksand nobody prepared his biography, probably becausehe was less daring and colorful than Dave Cook. YetHowe's long-term and lasting contribution to the historyof law enforcement in the West may surpass thatof Dave Cook.

Sam Howe's dedication to Denver law and orderbegan in 1873 when there was no police department,and lawmen had to marshal the Denver streets withwhatever little authority was afforded them. Coloradowas still a territory and would not become a statefor three more years. Howe became among the mostenduring lawmen in Colorado and the West and, somesaid, in the nation, retiring February 1, 1921, at ageeighty-one after forty-seven years on the job. Much ofthat was during an era when a one-year policemanwas considered an old-timer—and a lucky one at that.

Within two decades Howe saw Denver grow froma mining-supply camp full of dirty-fingernailed, marauding,armed fortune seekers to a sophisticated cityinhabited by the diamond-studded nouveau riche upand down the Grant Avenue "Millionaires Row."

Sam Howe was a mystery, hiding personal secretsbehind his five-pointed star and copper buttons: secretsof his Civil War record, which appears blemished;secrets of a change of name; secrets of a wife hevirtually never discussed publicly; and secrets of achild—probably not his own—whom he reared, onlyto have the lad die as a teenager. Although Sam Howewas ever eager to tell reporters about himself and hisrecollections as a frontier detective, he did not talkabout his secrets.

Regardless of his puzzling characteristics, his shytendencies, and what some might have judged his unpolicemanlikestature—5 feet 6 and % inches, 138 pounds(his first chief believed he would fail within a week)—Howebecame one of America's premier crime statisticians.And with regard to his chief's prediction that hewould soon give up the job, Howe recalled with a winkin 1908, "I lasted 'bout as long as the rest of that bunchhad an idea they would last." They were all gone. Healone remained.

For at least thirty-eight of his forty-seven yearsas a Denver policeman, detective, and detective chief,Howe tended to his scrapbooks—carefully saving anaccount of every crime down to the tiniest suicide,every missing person, every thief or rascal or gambleror prostitute, every suspicious incident as thesqualling city grew up. (Well, almost every incident:Sam is known to have omitted a few stories that wereunflattering to himself, but he did not exclude thosethat were unflattering to the police department.) Storiesunkind to Sam discovered elsewhere during thisstudy are included here anyway—with apologies tothe old detective.

When an out-of-town lawman required informationabout a person with a Denver police record—ayear, five years, or ten years after the fact—he onlyneeded to write or telegraph the Denver Police Department,and the details could probably be found inSam Howe's Scrapbooks. Newspapermen—Sam wasfond of them because they put his name in the papers—usedthe Howe Scrapbooks to locate backgroundmaterial. Citizens, too, stopped by police headquartersin the old city hall at Fourteenth and LarimerStreets to see Sam Howe's Scrapbooks and hear thegenteel, aging lawman reminisce about the old dayswhen every bad guy packed a six-shooter—and didn'tcare if it was pointed toward a "copper" or not.

Sam Howe was born Simeon H. Hunt in Shelbyville,Shelby County, Ohio, on October 16, 1839. Hewas the eldest of seven children of Ira F. Hunt, afarmer, and Rachael McVey Hunt. How Simeon Huntspent his youth is documented sparsely: he received"some education," and at an "early age" he was apprenticedto a wheelwright. Hunt completed his apprenticeship,but he disliked making wagon wheels, believingother opportunities awaited an adventuresomelad in an expanding world.

By 1860, at age twenty, Simeon Hunt was practicinghis trade in Louisville, Kentucky, south of hisOhio home. Every day on his way to work, Huntpassed an army recruiting station, and he discoveredhimself feeling "full of ginger," as he later put it. Thedream of excitement rushed through him, and on histwenty-first birthday, October 16, 1860—six monthsbefore the outbreak of the Civil War—Hunt enlistedfor a four-year hitch, assigned to Captain James...