The Riggs Station stagecoach robbery occurred in 1907 when the outlaw John Marston robbed a guarded stagecoach en route to Riggs Station, Colorado from Blackwater, Texas. Marston, acting on a tip from the Strawberry postal clerk Hector Barlow, waited on the north bank of the Purgatoire River for a stagecoach to cross the river, upon which he planned to ambush it at the crossing. Barlow advised Marston to rob the stagecoach stealthily, but Marston decided to confront the stagecoach from the front, hoping to avoid bloodshed, as he was hoping to go "straight" and acquire money to build a ranch at Beecher's Hope in a nonviolent way. However, when the driver Wayland G. Deiter came across Marston standing in front of the stagecoach with a gun, he whipped the horses into action, trampling Marston. Marston, despite being gravely wounded, rose to his feet and gave chase, gunning down the shotgun messengers Louie R. Loudermilk, Brad G. Gimple, and North A. Newmann and also shooting Deiter dead. Marston proceeded to steal the $100 in the stagecoach's lockbox and abandon the derelict stagecoach, having stolen its cargo.
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