**  NEW BOOK IS COMING SOON  **
 

Author Mike Strunk has traced the Outlaw Trail, camera in hand, since 1962.  From Canada to Mexico, he has photographed the historic ruts, cabins, barns and corrals as the Trail winds its way through stunningly beautiful deserts, canyonlands and mountain ranges.  Butch Cassidy's Outlaw Trail - the author's second coffee table book - will be ready for publishing in early 2010.

BUTCH CASSIDY'S OUTLAW TRAIL PROLOGUE
Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid and many other outlaws roamed the vast deserts and canyonlands of the American West during the 1890s, sometimes riding 100 miles a day through howling blizzards and scorching sun. The Outlaw Trail of that era consisted of a maze of routes that connected robbery scenes, strongholds, and supply towns between Canada and Mexico. Remnants of the Trail can still be found as it winds its way through the sagebrush and red-rock canyons. Old cabins, barns and corrals that were once used by Butch and his Hole-In-The-Wall gang remain, moldering into the landscape.

While there are many excellent, scholarly, history books that describe whodunit, when, where and how, let’s face it – the outlaws seldom kept journals of their activities, so it is difficult to document their lives with certainty. The places and characters in this book are real, but it is a story teller’s version of the Outlaw Trail. It contains verbal accounts by those who still live on the land – folks whose family legends include stories of the outlaws and times gone by. This publication is, of course, a photography book and it includes contemporary images of many places haunted by the outlaws.

To give some logical order to the network of trails which the outlaws rode, I have chosen to begin the book at Butch Cassidy’s boyhood home in Utah and travel north nearly to Canada. I then take the reader some 1,500 miles south to one of the least-known hideouts of Butch and Sundance in New Mexico. Because Butch and the other outlaws sought the most remote, rugged landscapes for their hideouts in the 1800s, they remain profoundly wild country today. Many of these places are in the West’s national parks, monuments and recreation areas that we enjoy over a century later, and the book visits nine of our nation’s most treasured landscapes.

While this book is primarily about the land, I have built it around the life of Butch Cassidy, the best known of the outlaws. The purpose of the book is not to glorify the acts of the outlaws. Rather it is to introduce the reader to the vast, strikingly beautiful landscape through which the outlaws rode. An equally important goal of the book is to urge the preservation of the remaining historic artifacts along the trail, the remnants of the Outlaw Trail itself – and the lifestyle of the folks who still live in this country, and who eke out a living from the land.

My fascination with the Outlaw Trail began in 1962 when I first climbed the high mountains above Telluride, Colorado, where Butch Cassidy worked as a packer, and where he robbed his first bank. My interest in Butch and his Outlaw Trail waxed and waned during my college years. Then, in 1969, actor Paul Newman, playing Butch Cassidy; Robert Redford, as the Sundance Kid; and Katherine Ross, portraying the Kid’s beautiful sweetheart, Etta Place, starred in the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The movie captured the hearts of fans all over the world – and re-kindled my interest in the Outlaw Trail. During the forty years since the film, I have roamed and photographed the Outlaw Trail from Canada to Mexico. I’ve chatted with the old-timers who live along the route and have listened to the stories of their childhoods, and those of their parents – folks who met, knew, and sometimes sheltered Butch and Sundance as they hid from the law.

The hypothetical journey upon which you are about to embark may not have – or may have – happened exactly the way in which it is presented.

Click individual photos for details. Visit the Outlaw Trail Photo Gallery for more photos