"West of Pecos no law, west of El Paso no God"

Wed Nov 1 01:48:44 UTC 2006

Does anyone have anything on this? Maybe it's in a book of quotations (or  of 
legal quotations) somewhere? Judge Roy Bean was known as the "Law West of the 
 Pecos." West of El Paso there's little water and it's very hot.
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_http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/BB/fbe8.html_ 
(http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/BB/fbe8.html) 

BEAN, ROY (ca. 1825-1903). Roy Bean, a frontier justice of the peace  known 
as the "Law West of the Pecos," was born in Mason County, Kentucky, the  son of 
Francis and Anna Bean. The only sources of information about his boyhood  and 
youth are stories told by friends in whom he confided and the reminiscences  
of his older brother Samuel, published in the Las Cruces, New Mexico, Rio  
Grande Republican in 1903. Sam came home after serving in the Mexican  Warqv and 
took Roy with him down the Santa Fe  Trailqv to Chihuahua, Mexico, where the 
brothers  set up shop as traders. Roy got into trouble, however, and had to 
make a quick  exit; he turned up a short time later in San Diego at the home of 
his oldest  brother, Joshua, who was mayor of the town and a major general of 
the state  militia. Roy was jailed for dueling in February 1852 but broke out 
and moved on  to San Gabriel, where Joshua by this time had established himself 
as owner of  the Headquarters Saloon. Roy inherited the property when Joshua 
was murdered in  November 1852, but made another hasty departure after a 
narrow escape from  hanging in 1857 or 1858. 
His next stop was Mesilla, New Mexico, where Sam was sheriff of a county that 
 stretched at that time all the way across Arizona. Roy arrived destitute, 
but  Sam took him in as partner in a saloon, and he prospered until the Civil  
Warqv reached the Rio Grande valley. Bean may  have had some unofficial 
military experience, but he found it prudent to leave  the country and began a new 
life in San Antonio. In an area on South Flores  Street that soon earned the 
name of Beanville, he became locally famous for  circumventing creditors, 
business rivals, and the law. 
On October 28, 1866, he married eighteen-year-old Virginia Chávez, who bore  
him four children. The couple were not happy together, however. Early in 1882  
Roy left home, probably at the suggestion of his friend W. N. Monroe, who was 
 building the "Sunset" railroad toward El Paso and had almost reached the 
Pecos.  Moving with the grading camps, Bean arrived at the site of Vinegarroon, 
just  west of the Pecos, in July. Crime was rife at the end of the track; it 
was often  said, "West of the Pecos there is no law; west of El Paso, there is 
no God." To  cope with the lawless element the Texas Rangersqv were called in, 
and they needed a resident justice  of the peace in order to eliminate the 
400-mile round trip to deliver prisoners  to the county seat at Fort Stockton. 
The commissioners of Pecos County  officially appointed Roy Bean justice on 
August 2, 1882. He retained the post,  with interruptions in 1886 and 1896, when 
he was voted out, until he retired  voluntarily in 1902. 
By 1884 Bean was settled at Eagle's Nest Springs, some miles west of  
Vinegarroon, which acquired a post office and a new name, Langtry, in honor of  the 
English actress Emilie Charlotte (Lillie) Langtry,qv whom Bean greatly admired. 
Bean's fame as an  eccentric and original interpreter of the law began in the 
1880s. There was,  however, a sort of common sense behind his unorthodox 
rulings. When a track  worker killed a Chinese laborer, for example, Bean ruled 
that his law book did  not make it illegal to kill a Chinese. Since the killer's 
friends were present  and ready to riot, he had little choice. And when a man 
carrying forty dollars  and a pistol fell off a bridge, Bean fined the corpse 
forty dollars for carrying  a concealed weapon, thereby providing funeral 
expenses. He intimidated and  cheated people, but he never hanged anybody. He 
reached the peak of notoriety on  February 21, 1896, when he staged the 
Fitzsimmons-Maher heavyweight championship  fight on a sandbar just below Langtry on 
the Mexican side of the Rio Grande,  where Woodford H. Mabry'sqv rangers, sent 
to  stop it, had no jurisdiction. Fitzsimmons won in less than two minutes. 
Bean died in his saloon on March 16, 1903, of lung and heart ailments and was 
 buried in the Del Rio cemetery. His shrewdness, audacity, unscrupulousness, 
and  humor, aided by his knack for self-dramatization, made him an enduring 
part of  American folklore. 
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Everett Lloyd, Law West of the Pecos (San Antonio:  University 
Press, 1931; rev. ed., San Antonio: Naylor, 1967). C. L. Sonnichsen,  Roy 
Bean, Law West of the Pecos (New York: Macmillan, 1943; rpt.,  Albuquerque: 
University of New Mexico Press, 1986). 
C. L. Sonnichsen

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4 December 1892, Washington Post, pg. 15: 
<i.LAW WEST OF PECOS. 
An Odd Character Who Administered Jus- 
tice for the Forty-niners. 
The bonanza days of '49 developed some very queer characters in the West and 
Texas comes in for her share of them. Most of these old-timers are under the 
sod long ago, but there are a few of them left, and about the most original 
is old Ray Bean, "Law West of the Pecos," as he called himself. Ray was 
elected justice of the peace along in the fifties and he still administers justice 
to all according to his own method, which is one that would cause one of our 
modern lawyers to have palpitation of the heart were they to practice in his 
court. But withal Ray generally sized up the case about right, and once let 
him be satisfied of the guilt of the culprit and all the statutes, 
technicalities ,and precedents from the time of Adam down could not save him, and it 
came to be a pretty well understood thing that appeals from 'Squire Bean's court 
didn't go, at least that is the impression which Ray tried to convey, and 
his language was always remarkably clear on this point, as young aspirants for 
legal glory discovered one day when, after a case had been decided against 
him ,he gave notice of appeal. In a second 'Squire Bean had him covered with a 
six shooter, and in a voice thunderous tones declared: "Sir, there is no 
appeal from this court," and the lawyer concluded that if the 'squire said so it 
must be that way. Ray was the proprietor of the only saloon in the place and 
quite frequently when some one was brought before him charged with some minor 
offense, Ray would sentence him to pay for the drinks for the crowd. Such 
sentences were always executed to the letter. 
Ray was a very illiterate man, in fact, he could not read or write. He often 
boasted that he had the cleanest docket in the State, "there not being the 
scratch of a pen on it." 
During the construction of the Southern Pacific Railroad through West Texas, 
Ray became famous for his knowledge of law. 
A white railroad laborer had some difficulty with a Chinese co-worker, and 
killed him with a pick. The murderer was taken before 'Squire Bean, and 
pleaded not guilty. Without taking a word of testimony, Ray went to his library and 
got a volume of Patent Office reports, or something of the sort, and 
examined it very carefully, holding the book upside down. Finally, his decision was 
as follows: "Gentlemen, I find a law here against killing a white man or a 
nigger, but damme if this book says a word about a Chinaman, and the sentence 
of this court is that you (the prisoner) be fined the drinks for this crowd, 
and may the Lord have mercy on your soul." -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 
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23 April 1897, Naugatuck (CT) Daily News, pg. 7: 
FRONTIER JUSTICE. 
A Texas Judge Whose Influence Is Widespread. 
Texas is a big state and has a large population, including many men of great 
prominence. But there is no man in that whole sovereignty with a more 
repulgent glory than Judge Roy Bean, of Langrty, who declares that he is the "law 
west of the Pecos." And he is. West of the Pecos river in Texas, there are no 
limitations to Judge Bean's jurisdiction, and he does not, it has been hinted, 
 let mere statutes, "as in cases made and provided," influence him to any 
great extent in his desire to make the punishment fir the crime. There is an 
anecdote told of him when he sat as coroner and held an inquest on the body of a 
man who had met a violent death by falling from the great railway bridge 
that spans the Pecos river. An examination showed that the man had a revolver 
and $40 in cash in his pockets when he was killed. After swearing in a jury and 
looking over the effects of the dead man, Judge Bean said: "Gentlemen of the 
jury, there ain't no doubt how this man came to his death; that's all plain; 
but what I would like to know is why in the name of thunder he carried that 
gun. Now, gentlemen, it's agin the law to carry a concealed and loaded gun in 
the state of Texas, and jist because this gentleman took it into his head to 
get killed I don't mean to let him offend the peace and dignity of Texas. I 
fine him $40." This is an example of Judge Bean's efficient administration. 
Some day his decisions will be published, and then we will have for the first 
time a clear understanding of the law of the frontier. -- Leslie's Weekly. 
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13 January 1946, Chicago Daily Tribune, "The Lily and the Bean" by 
Delos Avery, pg. F1: 
The boundary line between civilization and the rest of Texas in the pre-Bean 
period was the Pecos river, which flowed--and still does--into the Rio 
Grande. There was an undisputed saying: 
"West of the Pecos there is no law, and west of El Paso there is no God."

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