Bar Fights, Jail Breaks, Hold-ups and Lots and Lots of Booze: “Silver Tip Bess” and “Irish Kate” Two Women Putting Wild Back into the Wild West

Why should all the men have all the fun?

Bessie Belvins, better known around the west as “Silver Tip Bess” certainly didn’t think so. She worked as a cowhand, tough long days in the saddle, and when she’d get to town, she could raise hell with the wildest cowboys, when drunk or angry she was described as a “holy terror.”

Her reputation as a hard working; hard drinking women stretched across Arizona, Utah, Montana, and Colorado, at least according to the Daily Sentinel in a February 8th, 1906, article. This was her first appearance in the local newspapers and court docket, but not her last. The Sentinel reported that her name “was connected with several big saloon fights, cowboy broils, and… alleged that she was connected with a big hold up…a few years ago.” The same article describes her arrest the previous day for Drunk and Disorderly. “She resisted arrest and declared that she would not go to jail. Officer O’Neil secured the services of two or three other men…she fought every step of the way but luckily had no gun on her person…something unusual for her.” But she was not unarmed, as she bit one of the men attempting to assist the overwhelmed officer in her arrest.

“Silver Tip Bess” spent the next couple years in and out of the Grand Junction area, and in and out of the city and county lock-up. A 1908 article explained her methods:

“She rides from town to town in box-cars and on the bumpers like an ordinary hobo, and succeeds in making her presence known in a new town shortly after her arrival; consequently she is kept continually on the move and is just as much of an expert in beating her way from one place to another as any male tramp.”

When “Silver Tip Bess” was out of town, “Irish Kate” would keep the boys in blue busy. “Silver Tip Bess has not been greatly missed for “Irish Kate” and Daisy Rogers have succeeded in keeping things lively and have not allowed the town to go to sleep,” an August 6, 1907, article in the Daily Sentinel complains.

“What to do with “Irish Kate’ has long been one to of the leading problems before the police authorities of Grand Junction and it is as far from solution today as it ever was.” Daily Sentinel June 21, 1907.

“Irish Kate” was suspected of helping David C. Hitchcock escape from the county Jail in July of 1907. She had visited Hitchcock a few days before the escape. The authorities also found “love letters of the rankest kind,” from Kate to Hitchcock. She was apparently very fond of him. This was a reoccurring problem, because she was married. In 1904, Kate’s husband came home to find Kate and two men drunk at their house. “What the Hell you doing here?” Mike Costenzo (sometimes spelled Costanzo) asked and without waiting for and answer struck one of the men with his revolver and put a bullet threw the other man’s hat. The Sentinel opined about the Costenzo’s “They are a bad lot.”

She was such a frequent flyer in the newspaper blotter that the sentinel gave her this moniker “Irish Kate” Costanzo, the greatest trial and tribulation that ever befell the police department of Grand Junction.”

Many women in the west, enjoyed the less socially restrictive society, for “Irish Kate” and “Silver Tip Bess,” it was still too much.

**Both photos are courtesy of Denver Public Library Western History Collection. One is from Meeker, CO, & the other from Rifle, CO. Still digging for a Grand Valley Saloon pic!