The Shootout in Campo and the Stone Store

The Shootout in Campo and Gaskill Brothers’ Stone Store Museum

When you are driving on California State Highway 94 coming from the west, the road bears to the left on a sharp turn as you come down from a hill, and there before you, just across the railroad tracks and Campo Creek, you see a sturdy two-story stone building with steel shutters, and a single door. It is built into a steep bank amid oak trees that are a little over 100 years old. Cement stairs have been built up the left side of the building, and to the left of that, is an addition on the second floor to provide a restroom and a storage room.

 The addition, a new roof and extensive repairs, were done during the latter part of WWII when Camp Lockett, the last home of the 10^th and 28^th regiments of Buffalo Soldiers, trained in Campo. They also patrolled the border, protected the railroad, and a reservoir a few miles away. that was an important water supply source for the city of San Diego. After the cavalrymen were shipped to North Africa, the base was used as military convalescent hospital, and a prisoner of war camp for Italian prisoners, who helped in repairing the stonework in the old store. 

The stone store was built in 1885 to replace a small wooden structure that straddled the brook. The Gaskills, who built the store, had arrived in Campo in 1868, the same year other notable local families such as the Hooks and the Grigsbys. In those days the community was still known by its Indian name, Milquetay. The Gaskills consisted of two brothers, born almost 20 years apart, Simon and Luman. Simon was the oldest and his wife had left him when he had a blacksmith business in a mining town in Nevada, but Luman had a Mormon bride, born in Utah, whom he had recently married in San Bernardino.

They bought property from a man named Burris, who signed the deed with an X, and they also bought an interest in the little frame store, owned and operated by a Mr. Gass. Luman opened a blacksmithing business just across the brook, and Luman worked in the store. When Luman and Gass had a falling out, the brothers bought out Gass, and ran it alone. Since the stagecoach left the mail at the store, Luman was also the postmaster.

The brothers raised cattle, and had a large bee business at some time during the thirty years they lived in Campo. Luman became the Justice of the Peace, which is ironic, because the story goes that, when he arrived in the area, he was using an assumed name because he was wanted for killing a man in a town to the north. When he reverted to using his own name again, he explained his guilt was all just a misunderstanding.

In early December 1875, a young Indian came to the Gaskills, and told them he had overheard bandits in a bar in Tecate, some 20 miles away, plotting to raid the store. The bandits were remnants of the Tiburcio Vasquez gang that had operated around Los Angeles County until Vasquez was caught and hung the year before. The leadership fell to a man named Chavez, who was the one who planned the raid, but decided to postpone it until cool weather. There was a wanted poster out on him. He got a temporary job breaking horses on a ranch in Yuma. The foreman recognized him, but bided his time until Chavez and taken off his gun belt to mount a horse. When the foreman drew his gun, Chavez lunged for his discarded pistol, but was shot dead before he got to it. To collect the bounty, they beheaded Chavez and sent it to his mother for identification. The leadership then fell to Cruz Lopez, by all accounts a real sociopath. Later it was learned he had killed several people on his way south from Los Angeles.

On Dec. 4, 1875, a Saturday, about 10 in the morning, five bandits rode casually into town. They had planned on surprising the Gaskill brothers, but Silas was out in the yard shoeing a horse. Three of them, stood holding their horses, while Lopez and a man named Alvijo, entered the store where a local man, Martinez, who was in cahoots with the bandits, was hanging around watching Luman sweep the floor. They asked to see some bandannas (or rope as some stories go). As Luman bent to get them, Alvijo jumped over the counter and grabbed him, and Lopez shot him in the neck, but not before Luman yelled ‘Murder.” Because of the struggle, Luman was shot at an angle and the bullet entered his neck, and went through part of his lung. The bandits thought he was dead. Martinez showed his colors when he rummaged around under the counter, and found some gold certificates before they all ran out the door.

Because the Indian boy had warned them, Luman had placed shotguns in several places close to where he worked. As soon as he heard Luman’s ‘Murder”, he grabbed a shotgun and killed one bandit as he came out of the store, and he wounded another. With his gun empty, he tried to get to where he had stashed another gun, but was shot down unconscious with a wound in the shoulder.

Inside, Luman was not only alive, but he had found a shotgun, crawled to the door, shot one of the bandits, and missed another. He dropped through a trap door into the water of the creek below, and tried to go to his house a short distance up the creek to get another gun. However, he collapsed in the cold water, and it was thought later that was what kept him from bleeding to death. When they carried him into his house, he said, “Just leave me on the floor. I won’t last long.” But, he was wrong, he lived to be seventy years old, and died of pneumonia, leaving a large family behind.

About this time, a sheepherder, known as Frenchie, arrived from Grigsby’s ranch for the mail, and saw that the Gaskills were in trouble. He dismounted, pulled his rifle off the horse and, shooting over the horse’s back, he shot Lopez in the neck. It was not a mortal wound. Lopez shot back and hit and killed the horse. The bullet went completely through the horse and hit the sheepherder, also not a mortal wound.  At this point, Lopez decided to flee, and he mounted a horse and galloped off. The only bandit not wounded, Alonzo Cota, had been hiding behind a woodpile, and he threw his wounded friend over his horse, and galloped after Lopez eastward toward Jacumba.

 When the smoke cleared after the gunfight, Teodoro Vasquez, nephew of Tiburcio Vasquez was dead on the ground outside the store; Martinez was wounded and captured; Lopez, Cota, and Alvitro were riding east; and the sixth bandit, Jose Alvijo, was wounded and hiding in the rocks nearby.

When a posse followed Lopez and Cota, a short time later, they found Alvitro, the wounded man, propped against a tree, with a fresh bullet hole in his head. They decided he had been shot for slowing up the other two men.

On Sunday morning, in the cold early hours before dawn, Alvijo, the sixth man who had been hiding, staggered up to a local residence and asked for help. They patched him up as best they could, but didn’t expect him to live until daybreak. He begged Silas to he let him live and he would work seven years for no wages. Sheriff Hunsaker and three deputies arrived from San Diego before noon, having ridden the 55 miles at such a pace that one horse was run to death. The sheriff immediately locked up Alvijo with Martinez, and three men were set to guarding the prisoners.

Sometime after dark, the two older men left to get something to eat, leaving Jimmy Keys on guard by himself. When men on horses approached and offered Jimmy a drink of whiskey, he took it. Thereupon, they grabbed him and tied him up. Jimmy said later they had bandanas on their faces, and he didn’t know them, but there was some doubt about that. The men dragged the prisoners out to a tree ‘at some distance’ and hanged them with a single rope, where they were found the next day. The men who hung them were never identified.

The sheepherder eventually died of his infected wound before another year was out, after going from one doctor to another all the way to San Francisco. A story reached the Gaskills that Lopez also died of infection in his neck wound within a year.

This all happened around the little frame store, and because there were other threats from Mexico, the Gaskills decided in 1885, to build a store that would double as a fort. They hired two prospectors, both named Anderson, but not related, to do the blasting and shaping of the rocks, and generally direct the construction. The walls are four feet thick on the bottom floor, and two feet think upstairs. Townspeople did have several occasions to seek refuge there, but the new store was never attacked.

The store served ranchers for a wide area. You could buy everything from staples like sugar and flour, to sewing essentials, hay and oats for animals, and coffins. If they didn't have it on hand, they would order it for you. They sold the store in 1898 and Silas and Luman moved their families to San Diego. Silas had gotten a divorce from his first wife and married a lady from Massachusetts, who nagged him and made his life miserable. Apparently both wives died before their husbands, because we learn from our records, that both men were living with a son or daughter when they died, Luman in San Diego, and Silas in Whittier in Los Angeles County.

 Through the years the location of the hanging tree was forgotten. But a local man, also named Lopez, seemed to know that it was a huge oak near where a county vehicle depot has been for at least 40 years. In the 1960s the tree blew down, and Lopez and a cowboy friend, used a power saw, cut about four feet off the bottom of the tree, and carried it by bulldozer, roots and all, and planted it near the Stone Store. In the seven years I was a volunteer, I couldn’t find a picture of that tree in its prime. One day Lopez told me where the stump had come from. So the museum still has the ‘hanging stump’.