The Battle of Lincoln, New Mexico, so-called Five-Day Battle or Five-Day Siege, was a five-day-long firefight between the Murphy-Dolan Faction and the Regulators that took place between July 15–19, 1878, in Lincoln, New Mexico. It was the largest armed battle of the Lincoln County War in the New Mexico Territory. The firefight was interrupted and suppressed by United States Cavalry led by Lt. Col. Nathan Dudley from Fort Stanton.
By September 1878, when Territorial Governor Lew Wallace was appointed by the president, many of the Regulators and other fighters had returned to normal life, as many had left the area. Wallace tasked Lincoln County Sheriff Pat Garrett to reduce lawlessness in the region, and, within three years, he and his deputies had hunted down and killed William "Billy the Kid" Bonney and other figures who had continued to operate in the area.
Armed conflict in the Lincoln County War began with the killing of John Tunstall on February 18, 1878, by members of the Jesse Evans Gang (who were hired as gunmen by the "Murphy-Dolan" faction—referred to as "The House" by local residents) to harass their commercial competition in Lincoln. Tunstall had become a competitor of the established Murphy-Dolan mercantile store and bank.
The failure of Lincoln County Sheriff William J. Brady to take action against those responsible for the death of Tunstall led to Tunstall's supporters forming their own armed vigilante group. They called themselves the Lincoln County Regulators, and were led by Richard "Dick" Brewer. Other members included gunmen such as Charlie Bowdre, John Middleton, Frank Coe, George Coe, "Big Jim" French, Doc Scurlock, and William Bonney (later known as "Billy the Kid"). The conflict resulted in numerous deaths on both sides, including the killing of Sheriff Brady on April 1, 1878.
On April 29, 1878, George Peppin, the newly appointed county sheriff, led a posse that included Jesse Evans and several of his gang, as well as the Seven Rivers Warriors gang to engage three Regulators in a shootout at the Fritz Ranch, resulting in the death of Frank McNab, the wounding of Ab Saunders, and the capture of Frank Coe. Shortly after his capture, Frank Coe escaped custody, although the details are unknown.
The following morning, George Coe took up a defensive position on the roof of Alexander McSween's house. Coe had lost his trigger finger earlier in the month in a gunfight with Buckshot Roberts. He took aim at 'Dutch Charlie' Kruling, a member of the Seven Rivers gang. As the distance exceeded 350 yards, Henry Brown warned Coe he was wasting his shot, but Coe shot and successfully wounded Kruling. That same day, Seven Rivers members Tom Green, Charles Marshall, Jim Patterson, and John Galvin were killed in Lincoln, and the Regulators were blamed.
The frontier period of the American West (roughly 1865–1900) was defined by cattle drives, mining booms, railroad construction, and the violent suppression of Indigenous resistance. Texas longhorn cattle drives north along the Chisholm Trail to railheads in Kansas brought beef to eastern markets from the 1860s through the 1880s. Mining rushes to the Black Hills (1874), Colorado (1858–1859), and the Comstock Lode in Nevada attracted tens of thousands of prospectors and boom towns that rose and collapsed within years. The range wars between cattle ranchers and homesteaders, vigilante justice, and the careers of figures like Wyatt Earp, Jesse James, and Billy the Kid became mythologized in dime novels and later in film. The Dawes Act (1887) and the opening of Oklahoma Territory to homesteading (1889) completed the legal dismantling of Indigenous land tenure in the West. By 1890 the US Census declared the frontier effectively closed, and the era of open-range cattle drives ended with the introduction of barbed wire fencing across the plains.
This page covers Lincoln County War – Gunfight at Lincoln (July 15-19 1878). A full Aubrey report for the area pulls together this battle alongside historic sites, land records, and everything else the record holds within a few miles:
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