Oklahoma Territorial Museum opens new exhibit on Elmer McCurdy

In The Afterlife of an American Outlaw, the Oklahoma Territorial Museum in Guthrie, OK tells the story of train robber turned funhouse mummy, Elmer McCurdy.  This new exhibit covers the criminal career of Elmer McCurdy and his post mortem career as a carnival attraction.

The exhibit highlights the gun that killed him and information on the lawman that fired the fatal shot. Recent research sheds new light on McCurdy as a criminal and reintroduces Stringer Fenton as the hero of the story in 1911.

An opening event is scheduled for Saturday, October 26 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. The Guthrie Gunfighters kick off the event with a Wild West shootout. Wear your costumes and bring your kids for spooky carnival fun.

Admission to the exhibit opening is free.

The Oklahoma Territorial Museum is located at 406 E. Oklahoma Avenue. Regular hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM.

McCurdy’s career took off after his death

— Courtesy of Road Side America

Elmer McCurdy was an inept, bottom-rung outlaw, alcoholic and disease-ridden, when he died in a shootout near the Oklahoma-Kansas border in 1911. The posse who killed him believed that he was part of a gang that had robbed a nearby train, but he may not have been, and in any case the robbers had robbed the wrong train. It would have been an appropriately stupid end to a forgettable life.

Elmer McCurdy’s career, however, had just begun.

Since no one would claim his body, Elmer was propped in a corner of a Pawhuska, Oklahoma, mortuary where visitors could view him for a nickel a peek. This went on for five years. Then two men claiming to be Elmer’s brothers took the body — and turned it into a freak show attraction at various traveling carnivals. This lasted for five decades. Elmer eventually wound up painted to glow in the dark in a Long Beach, California, amusement park, where he dangled from a noose. Shrunken and mummified, McCurdy was simply called “the dummy.” People had forgotten that he was real.

One day, while filming a TV episode of The Six Million Dollar Man at the amusement park, a workman moved McCurdy and his arm fell off, exposing the skeleton within. The mysterious dead man was autopsied by the LA County Coroner and made the headlines. People wanted to know who the body belonged to.

Oklahoma eventually proved that it belonged to Elmer McCurdy, and in 1977 he was finally given a proper burial in Guthrie’s Summit View Cemetery next to Bill Doolin, another outlaw. The cemetery refers to these two graves as its “Boot Hill.”