Stevens: Before Bluitt became a ghost town

If you’ve ever been to Bluitt, you probably didn’t know it. It’s located about 48 miles southeast of Portales, or at least that’s where the Bluitt Cemetery is located. That’s about all that’s left of the ghost town today.

Bluitt hasn’t really been a place since the mid-1940s. It had a school as late as 1938 when the student population was more than 50, according to “Roosevelt County History and Heritage.” But it was never big enough for an Allsup’s.

Dirt farmers began homesteading in the area about 1916, but not everybody was there to live off of the land.

That’s why Bluitt became the site of an epic gun battle, pitting bank robbers against Texas and New Mexico law officers on Aug. 20, 1932.

Lee Pebworth was described in media accounts as the “ring leader of (a) bandit gang.” Pebworth and others were suspected of robbing banks in Texas and Oklahoma, then retreating to their farm at Bluitt, waiting for the dust to settle, and planning their next job.

But when a bank in Olton, Texas, was robbed of $4,000 in mid-July 1932, the suspects were ultimately tracked back to their hideout.

Six weeks after the robbery, law officers arrived at the farm overnight and hid until daylight when they saw four men emerge from the home and enter a corral. “Stepping between the suspects and the farm house, the officers ordered ‘put up your hands,”’ the Clovis News-Journal reported.

The idea was to take them peacefully. Police thought the robbers wouldn’t be on high alert so early in the morning, especially since the Olton job had been so long ago. And who brings weapons to feed the stock?

But when the hands-up order came, several of the men “reached into feeding troughs near which they were standing, drew 30-30 rifles and opened fire.”

The newspaper described what followed as “five minutes packed with tragedy.” Witnesses said there was no way to count all of the shots that were fired, but the Pebworth barn was riddled with bullets after officers and bandits had fired “furiously.”

Plainview Police Officer Harve Bolin was killed instantly. Roosevelt County Deputy Sheriff R.L. Hollis was seriously wounded.

Pebworth was shot, but all four outlaws escaped in a car. Pebworth and another man were captured that afternoon at a farmhouse near Tatum, but the others got away.

Pebworth was taken to the hospital in Clovis where he underwent an abdominal operation and was subsequently chained to a bed to recover.

All of the outlaws were eventually captured, but not until more blood was spilled. The man alleged to have killed Bolin, Ed Stanton, was executed on Sept. 28, 1934, for the 1933 murder of Swisher County Sheriff John Moseley in Tulia.

Pebworth, 60, denied he shot Bolin and denied he participated in the bank robbery in Olton. But true-crime historian Lana Payne Barnett wrote on her “Panhandle Tidbits” Facebook page that Pebworth pleaded guilty to shooting Bolin so that he could avoid execution. He received a sentence of 99 years in prison. The sentence was later reduced to 30-to-99 years.

Barnett wrote that Officer Bolin was the father of 10 children.

There’s no particular reason to remember Bluitt today, except Barnett recently suggested we go looking for gangsters in the cemetery.

No thank you, Lana. I’m afraid there might be snakes — ghostly ones.

David Stevens writes about regional history. Contact him:

[email protected]

Author Bio

Do you have a question?
A comment you'd like to see published?
Or maybe a story idea for a future edition?

— Please email the publisher: [email protected]