Sheriff Pickering
Sheriff Pickering a one time resident of Carbon, Wyoming was involved in many scrapes with outlaws.
1885 September 2: In Rock Springs, Wyoming, a riot between Chinese immigrant coal miners and white immigrant coal miners over ongoing labor disputes broke out. It became known as the Rock Springs Chinese Massacre.
1886 Aug. 28: A SHOOTING. A shooting scrape occurred at Rock Springs Tuesday. A constable, George Pickering, undertook to arrest a man named Tassey, who was drunk and quarrelsome and finally had to shoot him in self-defense. A coroner's jury exonerated Pickering. (Laramie Weekly Sentinel, Laramie Wyoming, Aug. 28, 1886)
1889 June 2: Butch Cassidy [Robert Leroy Parker] and the Sundance Kid [Harry Longabaugh] along with the rest of the Wild Bunch robbed the Union Pacific Overland Flyer No. 1 a few miles east of Old Carbon and Hanna at Wilcox, Wyoming.
1889: George Pickering arrested Calamity Jane in Rock Springs. Nicolas Kappes, who operated a "beer saloon" in Rock Springs remembered her (Calamity Jane) approach with the men. She would lean her elbow on the bar, blow smoke in their eyes and talk in confidential whispers to the strangers she flattered with her caressing words. "For some reason, Martha (Calamity Jane) took a liking to Kappes' establishment and "pre-empted it as home." Even though she was kind to the "gentle owner" he considered her a nuisance. "She would bring rough men into my place and make them spend their money freely, thinking that she was boosting my business," said Kappes. When she appropriated a cot Kappes kept in his back room for her daytime slumbers, he tossed it into the cellar. Martha (Calamity Jane) began cussing and finally became so obnoxious City Marshal George Pickering arrested her." Afterwards, she was severely reprimanded and ordered out of town. (Calamity Jane: The Woman and the Legend by James D. McLaird, p.140.)
1890: George Pickering helped out Butch Cassidy in Rock Springs. "Pete Parker, said that Butch Cassidy helped save his grandfather's life one day when a crowd of drunken Rock Springs miners threatened him with knives and broken whiskey bottles. According to Pete Parker, Butch, clutching a meat cleaver from the butcher shop, and a Union Pacific Railroad detective named George Pickering, who was fortunately armed with a rifle, managed to back down the troublemakers." (Butch Cassidy: a biography by Richard M. Patterson, p72)
1914: Sheriff Pickering was killed by a switch engine that many in Rock Springs found suspicious.
KILLED BY A SWITCH ENGINE
1914 Jan. 3: George Pickering, one of the old timers of Sweetwater county, met his death by being struck by a switch engine at Rock Springs last Saturday, and was laid to rest in the Rock Springs cemetery Wednesday. (Green River Star, Jan. 9, 1914)