On a muddy Los Angeles street, three...

On a muddy Los Angeles street, three months after the Civil War had ended, Frank and Houston King were waging a war of their own, plotting to kill a wealthy rancher who had stabbed their brother the night before.

Outside the Bella Union Hotel on Main Street, on a humid July 6 in 1865, the King brothers waited to kill Robert S. Carlisle.

It was high noon. The scene was set for one of the the most famous gunfights in Los Angeles history--a bloody affair that left two gunfighters dead and another one wounded, along with several bystanders. A stagecoach horse was also killed in the street.

In a town even then known as one of the most lawless in the nation, the shootout at the Bella Union brought the art of the showdown to new levels of gore. It remained the standard of outrageous violence by which all other Los Angeles shootouts were measured--until modern gangs came into prominence.

At the time, shootings and lynchings in town were so routine that the local newspaper, the Star, rarely accorded them more than a few lines of type.

Because Sheriff Tomas Sanchez had trouble controlling the shootings, citizens groups were organized, meting out vigilante justice at the end of a rope. There were 35 hangings in 25 years among a population of 5,000.

The little pueblo known as the City of Angels had earned the nickname of “Los Diablos,” the town of the devils, because of its hair-trigger violence.

At the Bella Union, tempers often were short and gunfights were common. The watering hole got a reputation as Los Angeles’ version of the OK Corral.

In 1865, Los Angeles, already clobbered by a typhoid epidemic, had an outbreak of violence. Gangs terrorized residents. There were four bank robberies a day.

On the night of July 5, the fear that hung over the town was temporarily forgotten as townsfolk gathered at the Bella Union to celebrate the wedding of Solomon Lazard, of the great banking family, and Caroline Newmark, the daughter of Joseph Newmark, the rabbi who established the Los Angeles Hebrew Benevolent Society and the city’s first Jewish cemetery.

After much merrymaking and too much liquor, tension began to run high as rancher Carlisle, a guest at the wedding, engaged in a bitter argument with Undersheriff Andrew Jackson King, also a wedding guest.

The day before the wedding, King, acting on official orders from Sanchez, had ridden out to Carlisle’s 46,000-acre Chino ranch, which he had inherited from his wife Francisca’s father, Col. Isaac Williams.

King served Carlisle with a writ of attachment for some now-unknown debt. Carlisle, 38 and hot-tempered, threw King and the writ off his ranch.

At the wedding reception the next night, before friends could separate them, Carlisle lashed out with his bowie knife and slashed Andrew King in the hand and side. As King--not wanting to spoil the party further--walked away, trailing blood, Carlisle is said to have threatened to kill all the King brothers.

Late the next morning, as Andrew King was recuperating from his wounds, his brothers, Houston and Frank, met across the street from the Bella Union, where Carlisle was staying.

Frank spun the cylinder of his Colt cap-and-ball revolver, making a final check of the six chambers. From his position in the shade of a magnolia tree, he watched the Banning stage draw up to the hotel.

“That stagecoach will be leaving for the harbor in a few minutes,” observed Houston, according to a story in The Times on Oct. 14, 1956. Frank nodded, dropping the heavy revolver into his holster. Passengers began coming out of the hotel, handing up baggage to the top of the coach.

“Carlisle’s in the bar,” Frank said quietly, grinding out his cigar into the dust with his boot. “Let’s go see if he means business.”

Carlisle stood alone at the bar. As he raised a glass of whiskey, he glanced at the mirror behind the bar, and saw the King brothers approaching. Carlisle turned, walked to the doorway and drew his gun.

A volley of shots exploded. A woman’s piercing scream mingled with the whine of ricochets. A horse hitched to the stagecoach team dropped in its traces, killed by a stray bullet.

The stagecoach passengers in front of the hotel scattered, but several were nicked by flying bullets. Carlisle’s attorney, James H. Landers, crashed over a hitching rail with a cry, a bullet lodged in his hip.

Houston King fell in the rain-wet street, trying to raise his gun arm, but one of Carlisle’s bullets had pierced his lung.

Frank King, weaving, dodging and shooting, rushed into the bar ready to empty his gun at Carlisle. But Carlisle was already staggering against the wall, his legs buckling under him, four bullet holes in his chest and stomach.

King pulled the trigger, but his gun was empty. He ran over to Carlisle, who was struggling to get up, and struck him on the head with his gun. He struck so hard that he bent the gun’s trigger guard and could not fire it again.

Sheriff Sanchez arrived just in time to pull King off Carlisle. He shoved Carlisle aside and stood between them. Carlisle turned away and reloaded his gun. Propping himself against the wall, Carlisle lifted his gun with both hands and fired. The bullet pierced Sanchez’s coat but did not hit the sheriff. It knocked Frank King out the door and onto the street, where he died.

Carlisle, still breathing, was carried to the billiard table. He said he wanted to live long enough to finish off Undersheriff Andrew King, but if he couldn’t, he had a young son who would take care of the matter for him when he grew up. Three hours later, he died in an upstairs room in the Bella Union.

Houston King, recovered from his wounds, was tried for murder and acquitted.

Andrew King became a judge.

And the Bella Union Hotel was torn down in 1940. Today, a historical plaque marks the site of the old hotel, on the east side of Main Street, near the Children’s Museum.