Water Dispute Led to Train Robbery

In the West, as Mark Twain keenly observed, “whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over.”

No one knew this better than a family of Sunland homesteaders whose bitter water feud split a family apart and prompted one of them to rob a train to finance their water wars.

The dispute was so intense that it pitted father against son and brother against brother, yet descendants could only dimly recall its origins.

Over time, the feud turned a respected rancher and father of four into a train robber and killer.

Roscoe -- the town where a derailed train and robbery left two men dead -- would eventually change its name to Sun Valley.

In the early 1880s, Farmer A. Johnson and two of his sons, John and Cornelius, homesteaded land in the tiny, rugged and remote community of Monte Vista, which later was renamed Sunland.

A stream trickled down Big Tujunga Canyon to the Johnson land. A few miles downstream, Johnson’s third son, Alvarado -- nicknamed Alva -- owned a ranch and farmland he had gotten by marrying the widow of the man who had homesteaded it.

For nearly a decade, all the Johnsons managed to overcome what nature dished out: fire, mudslides, landslides, floods and grizzly bears. But when it came to water, more precious than gold, they parted ways.

Bitterness began to grow in the late 1880s when the father, along with John and Cornelius, started a water company by damming the water in Big Tujunga Canyon, cutting off the supply to Alva’s ranch below. Redheaded Alva, who had a temper to match, hired a lawyer who sued to restore the flow of water. But the costly process drove Alva deeper into debt, and the water stayed upstream.

After years of the Southern Pacific Railroad’s jacking up its price for shipping produce at harvest time, Alva was driven out of farming. Although he stayed on the ranch, he managed a grain store in downtown Los Angeles.

Alva hired two ranch hands, William H. “Kid” Thompson and George Smith, both of whom had criminal records, to work his land. Within a few months unsolved train robberies began plaguing the Southern Pacific.

On the rainy night of Dec. 23, 1893, three armed outlaws in masks and long dark dusters robbed the northbound Southern Pacific No. 20 at the Roscoe flag stop, at what is now San Fernando Road and Sunland Boulevard in Sun Valley. The town of Roscoe, believed to have been named for a local land developer or possibly a railroad brakeman whose first or last name is lost to history, consisted of a railroad depot, water tank and grocery store.

Stuffing their pockets with $150 from the train’s safe, the trio made off on horseback, leaving no tracks in the rain.

Seven weeks later, money spent, the trio pulled off another heist at the same spot, but with more serious consequences.

As a result, on the night of Feb. 15, 1894, the northbound No. 20 lay beside the railroad tracks like a dead horse.

Instead of slowing for one of the robbers, who waved a torch at the Roscoe depot, engineer David W. Thomas speeded up the engine because he saw a rifle in the man’s other hand. But the well-organized bandits had already thrown the spur switch, pitching the engine and two freight cars filled with oranges from the tracks.

Engineer Thomas crawled to safety behind a cactus, while fireman Arthur Masters, 27, lay pinned against the blazing hot boiler, his legs crushed. Train stowaway Harry Daly -- alternately spelled Dailey -- was hurled into the left cylinder. The 19-year-old died from the impact.

Masters’ screams of agony could be heard over the robbers’ bullets and over the explosion that blew open the safe containing a few thousand in cash and nearly 100 pounds of gold and silver coins.

When the gunfire stopped, the robbers headed out under the cover of darkness, with a wagon full of loot disguised as a milk wagon.

Thomas and other survivors rushed to rescue Masters. Masters begged them to put a bullet into his head or to give him a gun so he could do it himself. Instead, they worked feverishly to free his trapped body. He died an hour later as they pulled him free.

U.S. Marshal George Gard and railroad detective Will “Whispering” Smith were recalled from the San Joaquin Valley, where they were just days away from capturing Christopher Evans, one of two notorious train robbers who had nothing to do with the Roscoe robberies.

As Gard and Smith shuttled between Los Angeles and Visalia in pursuit of train robbers, evidence began to mount. A witness swore he had seen Thompson on the train before the robbery and another claimed that Smith had paid for a prostitute at an Alameda bordello with gold coins from the heist. The lawmen found wagon tracks roughly matching those of Alva’s wagon with a worn axle; the tracks led from Roscoe to Sunland.

With a $1,000 reward on their heads, John Johnson claimed his brother and Alva’s two ranch hands matched the descriptions of the thieves and murderers. He swore he had seen his brother returning home in his wagon in the early morning, hours after the robbery.

Thompson fled to Arizona, while his crime buddy Smith lay low around town. Alva was arrested, but robbery charges were soon dropped because the evidence was weak. Sunlanders sided with Alva as their outrage swelled against the rest of the Johnson family for turning against one of their own.

Eight months after the deadly robbery, lawmen got a break in the case. A man who helped Thompson launder some of the robbery money turned him in to Arizona authorities. In the meantime, local lawmen caught up with Smith and persuaded him to testify against Alva.

Alva, 36, confessed to the robbery at the urging of his wife and children. He told authorities where he had buried the booty in his Sunland orchard and agreed to testify against Thompson, accusing him of throwing the spur switch. Thompson would accuse Johnson of doing the same, an argument that would save Thompson’s neck.

In May 1895, Thompson was found guilty and sentenced to hang. But his lawyer managed to have the conviction overturned on appeal. He argued that Thompson had been convicted of throwing the spur switch, yet no one had proved he did so. Therefore, he could be punished only for robbery and not for murder. He was retried in 1897 and convicted, and sentenced to life in Folsom State Prison.

Alva also was spared hanging.

“During sentencing on November 17, 1895, Alva sobbed uncontrollably until the judge announced a life sentence at the state prison at San Quentin because he had saved the county the expense of a trial,” wrote Mary Lee Tierman, editor and publisher of the Foothill Sentinel, in her booklet “The Roscoe Robbers and the Sensational Train Wrecking of 1894.”

While he was imprisoned at San Quentin, Alva’s wife divorced him. He escaped once and was recaptured. He was paroled in 1907, and moved to Ellensburg, Wash., where he remarried. He was granted a pardon two years later.

In 1920 Alva returned to California with his new wife, Catherine, and worked as a dairyman in Oakdale. “Apparently years had mended the family rift. Alva and his brother John were driving together in Sacramento on September 6, 1920, when a streetcar ran into John’s automobile. The impact threw Alva from the automobile and fractured his skull. He died three days later, at age 63,” Tierman wrote.

In 1948, more than three decades after Roscoe was annexed to Los Angeles and more than a half-century after the train robbery, Roscoe was reduced to a mere street name, which now serves as the primary dividing line between northern and southern San Fernando Valley. Although memories had dimmed, conflicting stories emerged as to whether Roscoe was the name of the robber, the train’s engineer or the brakeman. Never mind that Roscoe was probably a land developer -- townsfolk didn’t want the community to be named for a notorious 19th century train robbery.

A chagrined Roscoe Chamber of Commerce polled local residents in 1948 and the name of the community was changed to Sun Valley.