Bolivia, Isn’t That Where Butch and Sundance Went?

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Film poster for Butch Cassidy and the
Sundance Kid - Copyright 1969,
New Films International

My last trip in 2012 was to Santa Cruz, Bolivia to teach our PIPE-FLO Training to YPFB the Bolivian oil company. When our training lead told me about the pending class, my first response was “Bolivia? Isn’t that where Butch and Sundance went?” 

The reference was to one of my favorite movies, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, released in 1969 staring Paul Newman (Butch Cassidy) and Robert Redford (Sundance Kid). The movie is based on the exploits of Robert Leroy Parker (Butch Cassidy) a real life bank/train robber and the Hole in the wall gang (referred to as the Wild Bunch). The real life Harry Longabaugh “Sundance Kid,” along with Harvey “Kid” Curry, Ben Kilpatrick “The Tall Texan”, Harry Trace, Will “News” Carver, Laura Bullion, “Laughing” Sam Carey, “Black Jack” Ketchum, Elzy Lay, and George “Flat Nose” Curry made up the Wide Bunch. I find two things interesting about the gang, the number of family members and their descriptively entertaining nicknames.

Front row left to right: Harry A. Longabaugh (Sundance Kid), Ben 
Kilpatrick (the Tall Texan), Robert Leroy Parker, alias (Butch 
Cassidy); Standing: Will Carver & Harvey Logan (Kid Curry); 
Fort Worth, Texas, 1900.

Butch and the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang robbed the Union Pacific train in 1899 in Wilcox Wyoming. E.H. Harriman the owner of the Union Pacific Railroad didn’t like people robbing his trains and wanted to bring the robbers to justice, so he hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency to track them down. Charlie Siringo the leader of the Pinkerton men hired Joe Lafors, and Tom Horn to pursue Butch and the Wild Bunch around the inter-mountain west.

Not only is it a great move, but it was filmed in Wyoming, Utah and Colorado where the real life events took place. I grew up in Wyoming and Utah, hiking and camping in many of the areas the story took place. I have to tell you, this part of the country has some of the most beautiful and diverse scenery in the US. There are wide vistas of high desert, breath-taking snow covered mountains, and deep canyons with cobalt blue rivers running through them. The area is vast with plenty of breathing room with few people. As you hike around the area you can almost see Butch, Sundance and the Wild Bunch staying one step ahead of the Pinkerton men.

By 1900, time had started taking a toll on the Wild Bunch, so Butch and Sundance decided to retire from the “banking” business in the US and took their act to South America. There is no proof that they returned to robbing banks once in South America, but the fact remains that during this period, it was reported that banks in Argentina and Bolivia were being robbed by two masked Americans.

Coincidence? Sure lends credibility to the theories! Moreover, the Pinkerton Agency was also going after Butch and Sundance in South America.

In 1907 they decided it was time to go straight and get out of the bank robbing business.  They went to work at the Concordia Tin Mine in the Bolivian Andes as payroll guards. It’s rather ironic that two retired bank robbers would become payroll guards, but back then, it was much more common for people to work on both sides of the law. 

Things must not have worked out well for them because in November 1908 a payroll guard was robbed by two masked American bandits. Held up in a boarding house in San Vicente, and surrounded by the Bolivian Army, the two masked American bandits were killed in a shoot-out. The true story goes along with the movie’s implications that the bandits were Butch and Sundance, and since they were never seen again, that is where the story ends.

It’s a fascinating story and a great movie. So how does it relate to my trip to Bolivia? It doesn’t but since it is my blog I can write about whatever I want!   

A gift from the guys at the Bolivian Oil
Company. Hola! From Lacey, WA!

Getting back to my trip to Bolivia… The YPFB (The Bolivian Oil Company) was under a very tight schedule to complete an engineering evaluation of two piping systems. They purchased PIPE-FLO for use in the project and felt that a training course would cut some time off their learning curve. They sent CAD drawings of their system prior to the course for me to review. The first day of the class, we did the normal FLO-Master training. The second day we started working on their projects. We discussed ways of attacking their problem with the focus on quickly building a large system with the software.

In less than two hours, they built a model of their piping system with over 600 pipelines. We then talked about the various operating conditions they needed to evaluate and within an hour, they had their results. The first thing they discovered was the pump they had on order would not meet their needs plus an additional punch list of items that they needed to address with the program. 

Paul Kelly says thank you too!

In the afternoon, we looked at another system. This time I stood back and allowed them to do the modeling. I was on hand and answered a few questions while they built their system, but within two hours they had their second system modeled and a variety of alternatives considered. They were very pleased with the training and the results of their study.

Later that night, I flew out of the Santa Cruz airport back to Seattle.  As I flew over the black Bolivian landscape I wondered if that was really Butch and Sundance in that San Vicente boarding house, or did they make it out of Bolivia.

My next trip is to Bahrain in the UAE where I will be conducting four training classes for the Bahranian Oil. I will be there for two weeks conducting a back to back Piping System Fundamentals and FLO-Master course for the Bahrain Petroleum Company.  I don’t know of any movie tie-ins to the area, but I’m sure I will have another story of adventure to tell.

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