Born during the last days of the Civil War and dying at the end of World War II, Baca's action filled life is interesting enough. However, this did not stop friends, authors, journalists, and even Walt Disney from embellishing and mythologizing his life.
Myths about his life even surround Baca's birth. According to one account, his 19-year-old mother gave birth to him while playing baseball. Unknowingly pregnant, she jumped to catch a ball and out popped little Elfego with a thud. Another story claimed that a hostile southwest Indian war party had kidnapped him as a baby. Living up to his portentous childhood, Baca matured to be a true prodigy of frontier skills, especially with firearms.
One memorable event supposedly occurred in October 1884, when Baca served as a deputy sheriff in Socorro County. Only 19 years of age, he had already earned a reputation as one of the best gunmen in New Mexico. In the small town of Frisco, about 125 miles southwest of the town of Socorro, a gang of cowboys from the Slaughter Ranch got drunk and began terrorizing the Mexican townspeople. When the deputy sheriff of Frisco sent for help, the young lawman went to the rescue.
Baca persuaded the justice of the peace to deputize him, and he immediately arrested and jailed one of the cowboys. The next day, a gang of 80 bloodthirsty men fired on the jail. Backed into a log jacal (simple hut), Elfego single-handedly held off the siege for 36 hours, killing four and wounding six of the attackers. During the barrage, the cool-headed Baca even took time to cook breakfast. Some of the cow-boys later pressed charges against Baca for the killings, but the judge acquitted him after he presented the door to the jackal as evidence. It contained more than 400 bullet holes.
The standoff against 80 cowboys followed Baca for the rest of his days and earned him a reputation for bravely upholding the law. Many accounts of his early life, however, reveal a more ruffian side. New Mexican judges tried him for murder three times; each time he was acquitted. Baca claimed to have been acquainted with Billy the Kid and Pancho Villa. The latter supposedly once put a $30,000 reward on Baca's head for stealing one of his guns.
According to contemporaries, despite his shortcomings Baca earnestly desired to be the best lawman in the Southwest.
As sheriff of Socorro County, instead of chasing indicted criminals, he would write them a letter. He warned that if they did not turn themselves in, he would “understand that they were resisting arrest and would feel justified in shooting them on the spot.” Baca went on to study law, and the
New Mexico Bar admitted him in 1894. A tenacious campaigner for justice, he excelled in the courtroom and soon earned an appointment as district attorney and was elected mayor. Once a friend being tried for murder in El Paso enlisted his help. A local journal quoted Baca as replying, “I'm on my way with three eyewitnesses.” This quote stuck with Baca throughout his life, although he admitted to a newspaper in 1939 that he had never said it.
In his later years, Baca's stories and folklore became so popular with local residents that he ran for several district offices, and even for the U.S. House of Representatives (unsuccessfully). During one of his campaigns, he printed up a pamphlet highlighting his gunfighter days. It became so popular that he began selling them for ten cents apiece.
In 1928 Kyle Crichton, a local advertising executive, wrote a book titled Law and Order, Ltd.: The Rousing Life of Elfego Baca. He based the work on personal interviews and Baca's pamphlet but added further embellishments to the already outlandishly mythologized stories.
Elfego Baca died in 1945 at the age of 80. In 1958 True West magazine published yet another brief biography of Baca. According to the article, he had been run over by a fire engine, stabbed with an ice pick, and wounded critically in a knife fight, and he had survived an automobile accident and some 50 gunfights. Thirteen years after the gunfighter's death, Walt Disney produced a television series titled The Nine Lives of Elfego Baca. The series, starring Robert Loggia, did for Baca's life what Disney did for many people and events of the western frontier: delivered yet another bigger-than-life mythical being to American popular culture. The mythical Baca can still be seen today on weekly reruns on the Disney Channel.
In 1959 Disney released another film, Elfego Baca-Six Gun Law. It featured a promising young actress named Annette Funicello in her big-screen debut. Recently, the History Channel produced a more factual account of Baca's life, attempting to demythologize him. In 1994 Howard Bryan wrote Incredible Elfego Baca: Good Man, Bad Man of the Old West, which portrayed both the good and bad aspects of his character. The following year Bryan's book won the coveted Spur Award from the Western Writersof America, Inc., for Best Western Nonfiction.
