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We're all familiar with Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp's friend. However, there was another Holladay in the Old West who was every bit as ruthless as Doc.
Although he wasn’t related to Doc Holliday, Ben Holladay probably destroyed more men’s lives than Doc ever thought about.
During the Mexican War Ben got a contract to supply provisions to the army.
On September 12, 1848, Ben bought government surplus wagons and loaded them down with provisions to be sold to the Mormons in Utah. Ben only accepted cattle for payment, at a value of $6 per head. Then he took the cattle to California and sold them for about $180 a head.
Over the next ten years, in addition to his freight business, Ben was involved in distilling and mining, always making sure the other man was on the short end of the stick.
In 1859 he invested in the freight firm of Russell, Majors & Waddell. Later he foreclosed on a bond and took over the whole operation. Within four years, through a variety of one-sided business deals, Ben’s company expanded to 5,000 miles of stage routes, 20,000 vehicles and 14,000 employees.
In a typical business deal, Ben entered the Denver market by buying out the competition and then raising the rates. When the merchants complained, Ben pulled his operation out of Denver, leaving them without any service.
Feeling the railroad would replace stagecoaches; he sold out to Wells Fargo and got involved in the railroad and steamship business. As Ben’s schemes got bigger and bigger, he started cutting corners, and in 1873, everything came crashing down when it was discovered that the assets on his books didn’t equal reality.
For his last 13 years Ben Holladay tried to come back, but he was a man who had stepped on everyone on the way up, and they sure weren’t going to let it happen again.