>> are you sure you want to go through with this? >> that is up to you. >> you just don't know how good i am. >> all right, then you show me. jim: i am a child of the i 1950's. always liked playing cowboys and bad guys. come to find out, we had -- we were every bit as wild as or tombstones that i fantasized about as a little boy. that led to the book. this spot on the creek became kind of notorious in the 1850's because in 1858, there was a vigilance committee in san luis obispo fighting crime. there was a crime wave that was rather spectacular. the committee was modeled on san francisco. 's in 1856. we have a dubious reputation of having hanged more men than they did. four.ancisco's hanged we hanged at least six. maybe more. this is where the hangings would have taken place in the summer of 1858. the crime in san luis obispo county, it was robbery. it did not stop at robbery. the gang that terrorized the area in the 1850's had a motto and it was "dead men tell no tales." they were not satisfied with stealing. they also killed their victims. they left a trail of skeletal between the past north of town to santa barbara. travelers remarked on coming upon human remains frequently during the 1850's. and the gang that would provoke the vigilance committee was actually headquartered in santa barbara. and the leader of the gang was the sun irish immigrants. his name was jack powers. he was raised in hells kitchen, in the bowery in new york city. he came to santa barbara in 1848 as part of a volunteer regiment to fight the mexican war. he did not do much fighting. what he did was what he did best, which was dancing. the women of santa barbara loved him. he also loved to race horses. so the men of santa barbara loved him. unfortunately, he was also a stone killer. he was the head of the outlaw gang that terrorized our county in the 1850's. there is a san diego state study. the history professor points out that the most dangerous place in america between 2010 and 2015 was new orleans. there were 47 murders per 100,000 population. if you applied the same formula to san luis obispo county in 1858, it would have extrapolated to 178 murders. there were 11 murders in 1855 alone, which does not seem like much. but in a county of under 1800 people, that is a tremendous amount. most of the victims were here because of the gold rush. what local cattle ranchers found out, just as levi strauss found , by selling equipment and jeans to minors the money was not to , be made in mining gold. that was for suckers. the money was to be made in supplying the needs to gold miners. this is always been cow country. suddenly there was this immense market that opened up to the north. san francisco went from 800 people to 25,000 people between 1848 and 1849. a tremendous amount of customers up north to sell beef to. what that meant was there were a lot of cattle wires, ranchers and cattle brokers carrying gold dust on the. those were among the main victims of outlaw gangs like jack powers. san luis obispo county has always been in between. it has always been remote. it is a place where you stop when you're on your way from los angeles to san francisco. it's about exactly midway. in the 1850's until the 1920's, even during prohibition it was , so remote that it was ideal for people who wanted to break the law. it was easy for a man like jack powers, our outlaw gang leader to pull a job and disappear. he had an escape route that went into the valley and would wind up south of your near los alamos. the remoteness made it ideal for people who wanted to disappear quickly. powers had an accomplice. his lieutenant in san luis obispo. he was a tough man. he was a brawler. he was a barroom fighter. he was like powers. he was a superb horseman. his father had once owned much of the los ossos valley just outside of town. he was powers' eyes and ears. whenever he heard there was a rumor that someone was going through san luis obispo with a lot of cash, they would alert powers. they would pounce. it finally came to a head in 1858. there were five murders in rapid succession. two of them were cattle buyers. two of them were ranchers. one was a farmer who was shot because he saw the bad guys ride by his farm on their way to kill the two ranchers. that led to the formation of the vigilance committee. the head of the committee, the young man who formed it was named walter murray. so, murray formed a vigilance committee and they decided to break up the jack powers gang. they did this pretty shortly between may and september of 1858. but they hanged one suspect almost immediately. then they found jack powers' chief lieutenant. there was a two-day running gun battle. one of the vigilance committee members, matt locke, was shot to death. walter murray was shot in the arm. he survived. they killed linares. they brought back two of his accomplices and tried them pretty quickly in the mission here. they were summarily hanged in front of a crowd of local people. eventually, they would hang six men in all. jack powers, wisely, fled the area. the last we hear of him, he is in mexico, getting into an argument with another bandit over a woman. it is an argument that jack powers loses. he winds up thoroughly dead. that is the end of the gang. i think there is something in us that secretly admires men who get away with stuff. there is something of glamour. jack powers is a great example of that. he was a superb horseman. he was a great dancer. he was a back slapper. the kind of guy who would walk into a bar and he merely transfer on jack powers. -- and immediately drinks were on jack powers. everybody loved jack powers. he had an exceedingly evil side. he was remorseless. he is fascinating. i think people like this are fascinating. what leads them to do with they do, why did they do it, and eventually almost always you , have the satisfaction of having your guilt relieved because they get caught. that is what happened in almost every case. a lot of that is because of walter murray. the man who formed the vigilance committee, i found a tintype of him holding his infant daughter. his tombstone in the san luis obispo cemetery, he died when he was 49. it shows a man's hand and a woman's hand clasping. my hunch was this is a family man and a man who did not want to raise his children in a place that was so incredibly violent. that, i think, was his fundamental motivation. you have to admit, he accomplished what he set out to accomplish. he broke up the powers gang. i think one of the reasons i write books, i grew up in a rural area. we sometimes think our hometown is not that important to the scheme of things. in my books, what i attempt to do is to link san luis obispo county to the great events of american history. in this case as somebody who grew up in the wild westerns, we were every bit as much a part of the wild west as any of the guys i idolize when i was a kid. so, i think that reminding people of that, that there is something that is colorful and valuable and unique that people may not know about. most people come to this plaza and enjoy the day and have no idea that five men were hanged here in 1858. yeah, it is a little morbid but it's a reminder of how far san luis obispo has come. it was once probably the wildest place in america and now it is a beautiful town. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> san luis obispo california is one of the many cities we have toward. -- toured. for more on her visit to san luis obispo and other cities across the country, go to c-span.org/citiestour. you are watching american history tv on c-span3. this week on the communicators, technology watcher tim wu talks about "the curse of bigness." >> facebook is the poster child. they got extremely large. they only cared about money and growth. they did not take the position responsibly. they ended up effectively hac ked, instagram too during the 2016 election. they have this terrible effect on what passes as news. there is a social effect any political effect of facebook it is enormous. >> monday at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span2. > american history tv, the u.s. commission on civil rights posts a copy early 20th century naziration policy and the refugee crisis. they describe how the immigration act of 1924 quart assistant impact of the crisis. she argues the american racism, anti-semitism and xenophobia played a role in limiting the arrival of jews in america. this is about an hour. >> this meeting of the commission comes to order at 1:30 p.m.

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