Gunfight at Ingalls Oklahoma: The Beginning of the End of The Wild Bunch (the Doolin-Dalton Gang)

This is a story that has escaped notice of many people interested in the history of the Old West.

Ingalls is located just ten miles east of Stillwater Oklahoma, the city in which Oklahoma State University (founded in 1890) has made its home.

On September 1, 1893, United States Deputy Marshal John Hixon commanded a band of thirteen US Marshals, and they rode into Ingalls, Oklahoma in an attempt to capture or kill eleven members of "the Wild Bunch," also known as the Doolin-Dalton Gang.

The Doolin-Dalton Gang, led by Bill Doolin and Bill Dalton, had wreaked havoc on trains and banks in the Oklahoma Territory in the early 1890s and thus became a major menace to law and order in the region.

The US Marshals confronted the gang members in and around a local saloon in one of the bloodiest firefights in the history of the US Marshal Service. The Battle of Ingalls ended in the deaths of three Marshals, injuries to two gang members, and the capture of one outlaw.

It has become a famous moment in Oklahoma history and in the history of the US Marshal Service.