Aerial survey · USDA NAIP · public domainNovember 5, 1871 stagecoach ambush that killed six and shifted national debate over federal Indian policy
US Hwy 60 near milepost 106, Flying E Ranch Rd, Wickenburg, AZ 85390
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
No admission. Roadside historical marker on US-60 at milepost 106; site is on Arizona State Trust Land.
Access
Limited Access
Desert roadside. The marker is accessible from the highway shoulder; the grave sites are off-road on unpaved State Trust Land.
Equipment
Photos OK
Arizona Territory Indian Policy Debate · Frederick Wadsworth Loring Memorial · 1871 Frontier Violence Documentation
On the morning of November 5, 1871, the stagecoach running between Wickenburg, Arizona Territory, and Ehrenburg on the Colorado River was ambushed approximately six miles west of Wickenburg on the La Paz road. The driver and five passengers were killed. Two others — William Kruger and Mollie Sheppard — survived with wounds and were eventually found by an eastbound mail wagon after fleeing on foot through desert. Sheppard died of infected wounds sometime after January 11, 1872.
The most prominent victim was Frederick Wadsworth Loring, 22, a Boston writer who had been contributing to Appleton's Journal and the Atlantic Monthly and who was assigned to document a cartographic expedition led by Army Lieutenant George Wheeler. Loring had been photographed just two days before the attack. His death produced an outpouring of grief in Eastern literary circles and brought the violence of the Arizona Territory to a broader national readership.
Military records attributed the attack to fifteen Yavapai warriors from the Date Creek Reservation — a group sometimes misidentified in period accounts as Apache-Mohaves. The circumstances that led to the attack, including the conditions on the reservation and the conduct of federal agents and military personnel in the weeks prior, remain a subject of historical debate. The attack contributed to a shift in Eastern public opinion regarding federal management of Native American affairs in Arizona.
Three of the six male victims have been identified through historical research: Frederick Loring, William Salmon, and Frederick Shoholm. Three graves, likely containing Charles Adams, Peter Hamel, and a man known as Dutch John Lance, remain at the site. Memorial plaques were installed in 1937 by the Arizona Highway Department and in 1948 and 1988 by the Wickenburg Saddle Club.
Sources
The Wickenburg Massacre site does not carry an active ghost tour tradition or documented paranormal investigation record. What it offers instead is the particular quality of a violent and unresolved event in an isolated desert location: six graves, only three identified by name after a century and a half of historical research; a disputed account of who was responsible and why; and a marker that has been replaced three times without resolution.
The attribution dispute is the site's live historical wound. Military records from 1871 name Yavapai warriors from the Date Creek Reservation as the attackers. Later scholarship has examined the reservation conditions, the conduct of federal agents, and the pressures on the Yavapai in the months preceding the attack — context that the original military reports did not include and that changes how the event is understood. The site holds both the graves and that unresolved question.
Loring's death, specifically, altered the story's reach. A young writer from a prominent Boston family, correspondent for magazines that Eastern readers recognized, photographed two days before he was killed — his death made the Wickenburg attack into a national story. The political consequences were real: federal Indian policy in Arizona shifted in the years that followed. The site sits alongside a highway where most drivers pass without stopping, in desert that has changed little since 1871.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
A roadside historical marker on US Highway 60 near milepost 106 commemorates the November 5, 1871 ambush of the Wickenburg–Ehrenburg stage. Three memorial plaques have been installed at the site: by the Arizona Highway Department in 1937, and by the Wickenburg Saddle Club in 1948 and 1988. The graves of six victims, three of them now identified, are located nearby on Arizona State Trust Land.
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