By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
An unusual Christmas arrived in Utah in December 1859. Unlike traditional holiday offerings, this one included a dramatic gunfight that raged along Salt Lake City’s Main Street.
The two primary combatants—William “Wild Bill” Hickman and Lot Huntington— knew each other quite well. In fact, a local newspaper called them “good and staunch friends.”
Born in 1815, Hickman was one of the most colorful and violent figures in Utah history. A murderous version of him appeared in the popular 2025 Netflix miniseries American Primeval.
The real Hickman was a frontiersman, licensed lawyer, and occasional bodyguard for leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He fiercely stood his ground against an invading mob in September 1846 during the Battle of Nauvoo, while the final Mormon pioneers fled west away from persecution.
Eventually, however, Hickman’s sweet relations with the Mormon pioneers turned sour and he was excommunicated in 1868. In a controversial 1872 biography, Hickman called himself Brigham Young’s “destroying angel” and accused the Lion of the Lord of complicity in many of his violent acts.
The other Main Street Christmas Day gunfighter—25-year-old Huntington—was a former Hickman protege. Also a pioneer, Huntington arrived in Utah with his parents 12 years earlier as a boy, just five days after Brigham Young first got here.
Among other things, Huntington served as a member of the Mormon Battalion and a Pony Express rider. He also was an occasional outlaw, and some say a member of the local Danites, the secret vigilante group that Hickman led.
The reason for the Main Street Christmas Day confrontation is not completely clear.
Hickman’s 1872 book claims he had just helped return stolen horses and mules to their rightful owners. As a result, he says, the thieves confronted him on Christmas Day out of anger and vengeance.
Others said it was a dispute about how to share the proceeds of stolen property. Brigham Young noted the “disgraceful affair” in his December 26 diary entry and said it broke out “over the division of some stolen property.”
In his papers, future church president Wilford Woodruff said the “fracas” occurred because the two men “had some difficulty about the division of some money and agreed to meet…to settle it and after they met the difficulty was renewed…”
Hosea Stout—a Mormon pioneer, police chief, and lawyer—wrote a diary entry about “a very happy Christmas with one exception,” the Hickman/Huntington “shooting match.” Stout added, “The cause not known.”
Whatever the reason, Huntington confronted Hickman after noon on Christmas Day in an alley near the Townsend Hotel, close to First South and Main Streets. Hickman’s version of events (from his book) makes for some great reading:
“One Christmas day following I went to the city, all the time watching this party. I stepped through an alley while waiting for our teams. This was their chance. Some half a dozen of them, well whiskied, met me; only one of my friends seeing them. The only brave man amongst them drew his revolver and attempted to shoot me. I caught his pistol, and would have killed him with my knife, but the scoundrels shouted, “Don’t kill him! Don’t kill him!” and stepped up and took hold of him. I did not want to kill him. I had known him from a boy, and had previously liked him; but these scamps had roped him in, and were shoving him into places where they dare not go. I did not see who all the crowd were, but saw two other revolvers drawn on me. This friend of mine says to them: “Don’t shoot; if you do, I will kill you.” I let Huntington go, supposing his friends would take care of him, as he was the aggressor, and I had spared his life. I put my knife back in the scabbard, and turned to look for Huntington, when I saw him leveling his revolver on me, not more than ten feet off; I gave my body a swing as he fired, and the ball, struck my watch, which was in my pants’ pocket, glanced, and struck me in the thigh, went to the bone, and passed around on the side of it. I then drew my pistol; but before I could fire he shot again, and started to run. I shot him as he ran, in the hip and the ball passed into his thigh; but he kept running. I followed him up the street and shot at him four times more, but did not hit him. I was taken to a house, …and another, the two best Mormon surgeons in the city, were sent for.”
Hickman’s account, written a dozen years later, leaves out some important details.
The gunfight possibly involved two rival outlaw gangs and a total of five to ten men. Some 40-50 shots were fired up and down Main Street over a span of about three to four blocks before both sides retreated to safe houses.
Hickman and Huntington were both wounded, as was one other man. Miraculously, no one died.
Hickman was unhappy with the work of the “two best Mormon surgeons in the city” he summoned to treat him. He explained: “They split the flesh on the inside and outside of my thigh to the bone, hunting the ball, and finally concluded they could not find it, then went away and reported I would die sure. I sent for other physicians, and the next morning when they came to see me; I told them I had no further use for them, as my thigh swelled and inflamed so that ice had to be kept on it most of the time for three weeks. Then Dr. Hobbs, of the U. S. Army, a cousin of my wife, came to see me; bringing with him a board of physicians from Camp Floyd. They examined my leg, and pronounced the surgery which had been performed on me a dirty piece of butchery, and said : “Were it not out of respect for the profession, we would say they had poisoned it.” But when it was finally opened, behold! out of it came a dirty green piece of cotton, saturated with something I do not know what, which the butchers had left in weeks before! No wonder they were sure I would die after leaving that in my leg.”
The public condemned the Christmas Day violence. The Desert News blasted it as “one of the most disgusting and disgraceful affrays that ever transpired in this city…”
Noting that “[h]onest citizens were returning from their Sabbath devotions” when “the bullets of sacrilegious rowdies whistled threateningly by them,” The Mountaineer newspaper asked, “Who were the protectors of the public peace…and where were they to be found?”
A few days later, The New York Times published an account of the gunfight by someone named “Richard” with the sensational headline “Troubles Among the Danites.” Depicting the fight as an internal quarrel between the secret group’s “notorious leader” and his “first lieutenant,” the bulk of the Times article was largely an anti-Mormon rant.
Although observers thought Hickman’s Christmas Day wound was fatal, he slowly recovered and even survived an additional attempt on his life a few months later by one of Huntington’s associates. Hickman lived another quarter of a century, passing away in 1883 while in exile in Lander, Wyoming.
Huntington survived only two more years. He was part of a vigilante group that in 1861 assaulted Utah’s territorial Governor John Dawson (who stayed in office only three weeks). After the assault, Huntington robbed a mail station and stole a prized horse.
The horse’s owners sought help from Orrin Porter Rockwell, a Mormon pioneer and lawman as well as another legendary figure of the Old American West. Rockwell—who was Hickman’s former business partner—tracked Huntington down and killed him in January 1862 at a Tooele County Pony Express station.
Despite what should have been a festive 1859 holiday season, Utah residents probably did not sing “all is calm, all is bright” that year. The Main Street gunfight was unsettling, as confirmed by the stern proclamation of The Deseret News a few months later, “Murder after murder has been committed with impunity within the precincts of Great Salt Lake City…”
Instead, during Christmas 1859, Salt Lake City likely sang a different tune. Its lyrics echoed the words of The Mountaineer newspaper: “Shall we say that the days of peace and law and order have passed forever, and that the reign of terror is permanently substituted?”
(Image from Hickman’s 1872 biography.)
*Mike O’Brien (author website here) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Paraclete Press published his book Monastery Mornings, about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, in August 2021. The League of Utah Writers chose it as the best non-fiction book of 2022. Mike’s new holiday novel, tentatively titled “The Merry Matchmaker Monks,” will be published in time for Christmas 2026.
