Jack Powers (John Power) (1827 – November 1860) was an Irish born gambler, outlaw, highway-robber, gang leader, and murderer in southern and central California during the Gold Rush era. For a time in the 1850s, robberies and murders committed by his group of bandits made the stretch of El Camino Real between San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara the most dangerous route in the state, and he and his gang had almost complete control of the small city of Santa Barbara. He was eventually driven out of town, but only after intimidating and defeating the sheriff and a posse of 200. He eventually fled the area, and after a brief career running a ranch in the Mexican state of Sonora, he was murdered in a fight over a woman, and his body was fed to a pen of starving pigs.
Read more about Jack Powers: Early Career, Santa Barbara - Rise To Power, Battle of Arroyo Burro, Later Career and Death
Famous quotes containing the words jack and/or powers:
“That is the man all tattered and torn
That kissed the maiden all forlorn”
—Mother Goose (fl. 17th–18th century. The House That Jack Built (l. 29–30)
“He who is conversant with the supernal powers will not worship these inferior deities of the wind, waves, tide, and sunshine. But we would not disparage the importance of such calculations as we have described. They are truths in physics because they are true in ethics.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)