Saturday is the final day the nearly 150-year-old church in Echo will be open to visitors this year with a special lecture at 4 p.m.
Park City author and attorney Brian Craig will present “Gunsmoke and Justice: The Untold Saga of Outlaw Patrick Coughlin and Constable Thomas Stagg.”
Craig said, unlike the well-known tale of Butch Cassidy, the story of Patrick Coughlin and Constable Stagg is little known—despite its significance.
“Patrick Coughlin, he was from Park City, and he basically was a young man and stole some strawberries from a street vendor in Park City and then stole some horses and one thing that led to another,” Craig said on KPCW’s “Local News Hour” Tuesday. “Then he was holed up in a cabin, kind of near the Utah-Wyoming border. And Constable Stagg was one of the law enforcement officers and a posse that tried to apprehend him and was shot and killed along with another police officer. Then there was this two-week man hunt across the Utah territory trying to apprehend Patrick Coughlin.”
Coughlin was eventually captured, tried and sentenced to death — becoming the first person in Utah to be executed by firing squad. Craig’s lecture will explore the crime, the pursuit and the lasting legal precedent set by the case.
“I thought it was a really compelling story. I love history and, as a lawyer, I always found this story really interesting and learning all about the legal aspects of his case and trial and appeal relating to that,” Craig said.
Craig said he spent years researching the case, poring through historical documents to piece together the story.
“As a lawyer and historian, I like using primary sources as much as possible, so I look through court records,” he said. There's the Utah Supreme Court case. We have other court documents, and a lot of historic newspapers from the 1890s. I found those sources particularly helpful and persuasive.”
The lecture at the Echo Church, about a 30-minute drive from Park City, is Aug. 30 at 4 p.m. It’s part of the Echo Historical Society’s regular series of lectures aimed at preserving and sharing local history.
