New “Old” Photo Of 1896 Fight

The other “view” of the Maher-Fitzsimmons match.

- Meghan Saar

Over 65 years of publication, True West has developed a loyal following of readers who send us historical Old West photographs to preserve in our archives. Among these is a photograph labeled as showing the makeshift Peter MaherBob Fitzsimmons arena on a sandbar along Rio Grande, near Langtry, Texas (bottom photo, opposite page).

During the past decade, some of the top museums nationwide have shared their public domain images, fostering scholarship that used to be relegated only to those willing to search through physical archives to find material that is sometimes labeled incorrectly or without sufficient information to locate it otherwise. The J. Paul Getty Museum is among those top repositories.

As the editor of this magazine, I also try to locate historical images for our articles. Because F. Daniel Somrack’s feature focused on boxing, I delved into a realm I don’t often explore, seeking matches that fit the frontier era. With Bat Masterson and Judge Roy Bean tied to the Maher-Fitzsimmons match, I tried my luck there. My search ultimately led me to “Fight Between Bob Fitzsimmons and Peter Maher, Coahuila de Zaragoza, Mexico,” the label for a February 21, 1896, negative in the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum. A researcher searching the collection for “Bat Masterson” or “Judge Roy Bean” never would have found this photo!