Warning! This is a history-lite column: some undisputed facts along with a few rumors and legends. Historians and writers agree that Butch Cassidy lived and worked in the mining boomtown Telluride, and he robbed the San Miguel Valley Bank in 1889. Telluride even commemorated this event with a re-enactment of the robbery in 2009 as part of a heritage festival. First, let’s go back to the beginning of that story.

Robert LeRoy Parker was born in 1866 in Beaver, Utah. At 18 he moved to Telluride in...