Hello all. Soapy sent me.
Just wanted to stand up and be counted. We have a couple more scoundrels for you.
The Blonger Bros., Sam and Lou, aren't widely remembered today, but they were well known across the West around the turn of the last century. They were professional gamblers, saloonkeepers, lawmen and detectives, compatriots of Masterson, Holliday, William Pinkerton and others. They followed the gold camps from Utah to Nevada to Colorado to New Mexico, providing goods and services of an illicit if not illegal nature.
And they were world-class bunco artists. Though never known as traditional short con artists, they became accomplished at bankrolling operations, fixing arrests and influencing local politics, and so found themselves working with the likes of Joe Furey, Doc Baggs, Con Caddigan, Bill Nuttall, Elmer Mead and plenty of others.
In Denver, Sam and Lou owned gambling houses, saloons and policy shops competing with Ed Chase, Bat Masterson, Soapy Smith and others. They were apparently major rivals of Soapy in the 1890s, assuming control of the city's bunco operations after Soapy's departure. While Smith loved publicity and bluster, the Blongers preferred a low profile, and their friends in high places like the Post, the sheriff's department, the mayor's office, etc. helped keep their long career quiet. This explains in part their relative obscurity today.
Lou would go on to exercise near total control over the city's con men for over twenty-five years, until a sensational bust in 1922. That's Lou to the left. He died six months after being sent to Canon City, at the age of 73.
There is a great deal more to the story than that, which we are chronicling on our website,
http://www.blongerbros.com. We hope you'll come by and have a look. One section of the site deals specifically with Lou's years as the fixer of Denver.
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