Christopher Evans (February 19, 1847 – February 9, 1917), a native of Bells Corners near Ottawa, Canada West, was an American farmer and teamster turned outlaw, and the leader of the Evans–Sontag Gang.
Alongside John Sontag, Evans was accused of organizing multiple train robberies on the Southern Pacific Railroad in California between 1889 and 1892. After killing a member of a posse outside his home on the outskirts of Visalia, he fled to the Sierra Nevada mountains with Sontag. While Evans and Sontag hid out in the mountains, writers Ambrose Bierce and Joaquin Miller championed their cause in the San Francisco Examiner. The outlaws evaded capture for ten months, all while being hunted by posses of lawmen, railroad detectives, and hundreds of bounty hunters. A shootout with a posse at Young's Cabin resulted in the deaths of Wilson, the posse leader, and McGinnis, a former friend of Evans'. In June 1893, both Sontag and Evans were seriously wounded in what is called the Battle of Stone Corral: Evans ultimately lost an eye and his left arm, and Sontag died of his wounds several days later.
Evans was taken into custody but escaped from the Fresno County Jail while awaiting trial with the help of an accomplice, Ed Morrell. Living as fugitives for several months in the mountains, Evans and Morrell were eventually captured after being lured into Visalia under the false belief that Evans' son was deathly ill. After his surrender, Evans was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in Folsom State Prison in Folsom, California. John Sontag's younger brother, George Contant, testified against Evans and hence acquired the lifelong hatred of Evans' family.
After serving seventeen years at Folsom, Evans was paroled in 1911 by Governor Hiram Johnson, a liberal Republican who had been elected on an anti-Southern Pacific campaign theme. Banished from California, Evans died in Portland, Oregon, in 1917, denying to the end that he had ever robbed a train and continuing to assert that he had killed only in self-defense. He also wrote a socialist book which called for expanded government restrictions to check what he viewed as the abuses of the business community. Evans is interred in Portland at Mount Calvary Cemetery. Evans' accomplice, Ed Morrell, served fourteen years total in Folsom and San Quentin. Championed by author Jack London, Morrell was pardoned in 1908 and thereafter became a well-known advocate for prison reform.
Beginnings Canada to California
Christopher Evans was born on February 19, 1847, in Bell's Corners, about twelve miles from Ottawa, Canada West. His parents, Thomas and Mary Ann Evans, were both Irish natives who came to Canada separately. They married in Bell's Corners in 1837 and together they had eight children, including Chris.
In the summer of 1863, at age sixteen, Chris left home and crossed the border into the United States. After experiencing Independence Day celebrations that year, Chris felt inspired to enlist in the Union Army at Buffalo, New York, under an assumed name. No official record of this exists, presumably because he joined under a false name. After fighting against the Confederates in the Civil War, Evans was sent to Minnesota and served in George Armstrong Custer's Seventh Cavalry as a scout to fight the Sioux. According to Evans, he became convinced the Sioux had been wronged and lost all interest in fighting. When his term of service expired, he refused to re-enlist and began working for the Union Pacific Railroad. After more than a year he saved up $800 and decided to journey west to California.
In 1870, Chris moved to Visalia, California, where he began working for a lawyer named Daggett who helped Evans educate himself. A few years later, he began working as a teamster, hauling lumber to and from mills in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Soon after, Chris married Mary Jane “Molly” Byrd, who ran an eating house along the road to the mills at a location known as Auckland, twenty-five miles northeast of Visalia. There, Chris and Molly Byrd married at her parents' "Rattlesnake Ranch" on November 4, 1871.
Evans found work watching the Hyde Mill on Redwood Mountain while it was shut down for the winter. Chris' job was to keep snow from collapsing in the roofs of the buildings, and the newlyweds spent that winter snowbound. The couple spent the next few happy months alone together and, before the snow melted, Molly became pregnant with their first child. Evans took an immense liking to the scenery of the mountains and in the spring decided to purchase a 160-acre property one mile below the Hyde Mill at the edge of the Redwood Mountain Grove, the largest grove of giant sequoia trees in the world. He appropriately named it the "Redwood Ranch".
Not long after Molly became pregnant, Chris’ fraternal twin, Tom Evans, travelled to California from Canada with his wife and baby daughter. Soon after, Tom discovered his wife was pregnant again. The two brothers decided they would build up the Redwood Ranch to make room for their growing families and built a cabin together.
On July 15, 1875, Molly fell from her horse while she and Chris were riding. She gave birth to a baby boy the following day. The two had planned to name the baby Eugene if he was a boy. He only lived a few hours. Chris built a coffin made of Redwood and buried him under a large cedar tree next to a creek on the Redwood Ranch. Soon afterwards Tom's wife gave birth to a baby girl, but she only lived a few weeks. Chris built another Redwood coffin and buried the baby next to her cousin under the big cedar tree.
The next spring, Chris and Tom heard about good paying work in Inyo County at the Cerro Gordo Mines, the top-producing silver mine in the state at the time. The two brothers decided to make the journey over the Sierra Nevada mountains on foot via Kearsarge Pass, before crossing the Owens Valley to Cerro Gordo in the Inyo Mountains. Molly was pregnant again, so she stayed behind at the Redwood Ranch and at her mother's until she was ready for the journey.
Tom soon became wary of working at Cerro Gordo due to the amount of violence that occurred there. His wife also still grieved heavily over the loss of their child, and she became homesick for her friends and family in Canada, so Tom said goodbye to his brother, took a stagecoach with his wife and daughter to the nearest train station, and left California for Canada. Evans found work as an engineer on the Bessie Brady, hauling seventy tons of freight daily from the north end of Owens Lake to Cartago Landing on the south end.
On May 13, 1876, while under her mother's care at the Rattlesnake Ranch, Molly gave birth to the couple's second child, which she named Eva. Six months later, Molly and baby Eva took a wagon to the nearest train station and traveled to Inyo County. The county had been the location of intense racial violence between the white, Mexican, and Native American populations. One morning, Molly opened their front door and saw a dead Mexican man hanging from a tree in front of the house. She told Chris that they could no longer live in such a violent region, and that it was no proper place to raise a family. By then she was expecting another child. Cerro Gordo had also declined from its peak, so Chris agreed and took his growing family back to Visalia.
Evans decided to purchase some lots on the northwest end of town for two hundred dollars. In June 1878, not long after the family returned to Visalia, Molly gave birth to a third child they named Elmer. Around the same time, Molly's father, Jesse Byrd, sold his Rattlesnake Ranch property at Auckland and instead bought a ranch in Adelaida located in the Santa Lucia Mountains about thirteen miles west of Paso Robles in San Luis Obispo County. Chris agreed with Molly that it would be best for the family to move to Adelaida with the Byrds. Chris was able to find work at the Klau quicksilver mine on Tablas Creek, about three miles southwest of Adelaida, and for the next few years the Evans and Byrd families lived together harmoniously.
In the summer of 1880, both of the Evans children contracted diphtheria. The two would both eventually regain their strength and recover, but not long after, Elmer suddenly went into convulsions and died. Spirits improved for the Evans family when, in August, Molly gave birth to a baby girl. The couple named her Ynez, after the nearby Franciscan Mission.
In the fall of 1882, the Evans family decided to return to Visalia. Chris decided to build a home on the lot he had previously purchased on the northern edge of town. It was not long after their arrival that Molly gave birth to a third daughter they named Winifred.
Molly's mother, Isabella Byrd, also bought a lot across the street and a few houses down from the Evans’ and decided to build a home there. She had since separated from Molly's father, Jesse Byrd, who had returned to drinking and went to live with one of their sons on a ranch nearby. Together, Chris and his mother-in-law bought forty acres of fertile farmland one mile south of the city, which they planned to farm at some point in the future.
Chris cycled through several jobs, as many of them were seasonal, but during this time there was no shortage of work available as there was a growing wheat bonanza in the San Joaquin Valley. During the summer, the family would spend their time at the Redwood Ranch, where Evans would work at the lumber mills. The family would return to the valley for the wheat harvesting season, where Chris would find work sewing and bucking sacks off a twenty-two-mule-drawn harvester combine. Through his association with many of the wheat growers in the valley, Chris began to learn about the negative sentiment that existed at the time between the wheat growers and the Southern Pacific Railroad.
California's "Octopus" The Southern Pacific Railroad was owned by the "Big Four"; Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, Collis P. Huntington, and Mark Hopkins Jr. Once small-time Sacramento merchants, the Big Four became the most powerful men in the state through the monopolization of California's transportation system. In 1861, after being brought the idea of building a transcontinental railroad to the eastern states by Theodore Judah, they formed the Central Pacific Railroad in Sacramento. After the breakout of the Civil War, Judah was able to convince Congress to subsidize a railroad track through the Sierra to the east. Judah's surveys showed Congress that a route through the Sierra was possible. He also pointed to the fact that the railroad would be a significant advantage in the war effort by connecting the east and west coasts, which would in turn secure a steady flow of gold and silver from California. President Lincoln signed the Pacific Railroad Act in 1862.
In January 1862, Leland Stanford took office as the eighth governor of California after winning the election that September. Almost immediately, he began using his influence as governor to promote the interests of his own corporation. In 1863 he persuaded the state to begin making their own subsidies for the railroad in addition to the ones already made by the federal government.
A year before the railroad's completion, the four had greatly expanded their assets and made plans to create a monopoly over transportation of the entire state. Stanford, Hopkins, and Crocker formed a bank called the Pacific Union Express Company with Lloyd Tevis, Darius Ogden Mills, and H. D. Bacon. In 1870, this company merged and acquired control of the recently formed Wells Fargo and Company with Stanford, Hopkins, and Crocker all being made directors. Through Stanford's influence in the state government, the four were then able to guarantee their control over the state's main seaport by constructing rail lines around San Francisco Bay and gaining control of the bay's waterfronts.