Seventy years ago when I was kid, I grew up in the backcountry on the Ft. Yuma Road, 35 miles east of San Diego. It wasn’t called the Ft. Yuma Road then, it was known as the Campo Road. Actually, it is the crooked and narrow State Highway 94. This arid mountainous region of eastern San Diego County is rich in old west history.

For instance, we grew up hearing the tale of a little known shootout that makes the thirty-second quarrel and gunfight at O.K. Corral seem trivial by comparison. True, the well-known Tombstone gunfight put Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday on the front page of southwestern history forever. But, the worst shootout in California history took place right here in San Diego County and it wasn’t no, thirty second, gunslingers grudge or street showdown at high noon. The shootout at Campo Creek, in 1875, took much longer and was a whole lot nastier than any O.K. Corral fracas in Tombstone, AZ.

Campo was founded in 1868 by two burly brothers, Silas and Lumen Gaskill. They were the quiet and mild-mannered sort, but harder than horseshoe nails underneath. They built a general store over Campo Creek that became the stage stop for the Ft. Yuma to San Diego stage runs. The store became a post office and government telegraph office. As ranchers, they also ran cattle and sheep and raised bees for honey. Continuing to prosper, they built a hotel and a blacksmith shop and a nice home. For a number of years the peaceful mountain hamlet grew.

But, Campo was only two miles from the Mexican border town of Tecate  (Tecarti to the old timers). Baja California was not a place of law and order, but a ferment of thieves, rustlers and vaqueros and a hideout on the Mexican frontera (border frontier) for murderers and those on the run. The town of Tecate made the likes of Tombstone and Dodge City look like peaceful Mormon settlements.

A certain Cruz (Pancho) Lopez, was a known hothead and cold-blooded killer. He and his gang were constantly on the run. He had arrived in a hurry from central California and in a short time was wanted in Baja for his vocation of raiding and robbing. He had hijacked the payroll of a government official.

Gold had been found in Sonora Mexico, down south, and Pancho Lopez thought it was a real opportunity for he and his gang to ply his trade by preying on the miners. He had a little problem though. It was a long trip through desert country, requiring a lot of supplies. While in Tecate he learned of the Gaskill store in Campo. Pancho got the idea that killing the Gaskill brothers and then robbing the store of those stupid gringos would be a push over. Then, all he would have to do is bring in the wagons and load the supplies of food, equipment and guns enough to make the long trip to the Sonora gold mines.

Pancho and his men came up with a plan. To them it was simple. A Tecate man who knew the Gaskills would go in to the store and distract Lumen the storekeeper with conversation.

Pancho Lopez and one of his men would saunter in and take out Lumen. Three others would get Silas. Waiting just outside of town, nine gang members with the wagons would come in when the shooting stopped. They would all easily load up the goods and be on their way.

But the adobe walls had ears. A Tecate man whom Silas had befriended got wind of the plan and spilled the beans to the blacksmith. To Lumen and Silas Gaskill, Campo was their taproot so they were not about to be uprooted or sent to the bone yard— not if they could help it. Though the six-gun has been glamorized in fiction and movies, the weapon of choice for any sensible sheriff or western cowhand has always been the double-barreled shotgun, stuffed with buckshot. So, they decided to place six shotguns loaded with buckshot in various places around the store and buildings. Then the brothers quietly went about their business.

It was winter so the nights were cold and frosty but the days warmed up nicely. Then it happened. It was the morning of December 4^th, 1875. The traitorous decoy walks in to the store and jawed a bit with Lumen. Close by Silas was working on a wagon beside the blacksmith shop.

Five men casually rode in to town. Two dismounted and strode in to the store. Pancho Lopez nodded an acknowledgement to Lumen who was behind the counter and then acting like a cattleman, asked if he had a roll of good hemp rope. Lumen turned to take a coil off a peg and when he turned back he was facing three six-shooters. He let out a loud holler to alert Silas! Hitting the floor he scrambled behind the counter to get the shotgun leaning in the corner. Two of the men leaped over the counter and wrestled  him down. Cruz (Pancho) Lopez shot him in the left lung and left him for dead.

Silas heard the yell and made a mad dash across the blacksmith’s shop for the shotgun placed there. The three designated bandits quickly appeared and one entered the door with a grin on his face. That was quickly changed to the look of buckshot spreading shattered dice on chopped liver. Silas was nicked in the shoulder but his aim was deadly. He ran out of the shop and blasted another one of the bandits. The third ran off and hid behind a lumber pile. He wasn’t thinking too smart because a double-barrel shotgun is only good for two shots. Silas dashed to a shed and got another shotgun.

A local sheepherder happened in to town and quickly sized up the situation. As he jumped off his horse, Pancho Lopez and the other two came running out of the store with guns blazing at him! He flattened Lopez with a neck crease that humped him up like a wild burro, but then got riddled in the crossfire from the other two.

In the mean time Lumen is coughing up blood from his lung shot but he manages to drag himself to the door with another shotgun. On seeing the third bandit standing over the sheepherder he flattened him in his tracks. Just before he collapsed, Lumen staggered to the shallow creek beneath the store, and like a snake-bit pup, he slid down the bank in to the icy water.

Pancho Lopez managed to get away relatively unscathed except for a bullet burn that creased his neck. He high-tailed it out of town on the Ft. Yuma Road. It is said that the Mexican Federales caught him in Tecate and hung him with the rope he stole from the store.  As for the sheepherder, he came to but was later found dead on his ranch.

Details of the whole incident were telegraphed to San Diego from the Campo General Store and Stage Stop and reported by the San Diego Union, thus making it part of the annals of San Diego County’s history. Why the nine gang-men with the wagons never showed up is a matter of speculation.

Amazingly, Lumen Gaskill survived the lung shot and he and his brother Silas went back to storekeepin’ and blacksmithin’. Both lived on to 1914. Once asked why on hearing of the plot by the banditos they didn’t just leave town, Silas said, “We don’t rightly encourage that sort of thing here in Campo.”

After the gun battle, there were threats of retaliation and revenge by lawless Mexican sympathizers, so the Gaskill brothers re-built the store out of stone and equipped it like a fortress in order to ward off any future attacks. The stone building had walls four feet thick at ground level and two feet thick on the second story. Their fearless reputation grew among the banditos and border outlaws and they were never attacked again.

Because the old general store was so well built, it was eventually fitted out and used as a jailhouse. If you drive by the historical landmark today that may be your first impression, not a general store but an old jailhouse. It’s the site of the shootout at Campo Creek—it lasted about five or six minutes—the worst shootout in California history! That was six years before the fracas at O.K. Corral. Wyatt Earp left Tombstone, AZ., in 1882 and records show that by 1886 he was living in San Diego. He and Doc Holliday would have been proud to know the Gaskill brothers. Who knows, maybe they did? 

Ed Keenan © 2007