The Kelvin Grade massacre was an incident that occurred on November 2, 1889 when a group of nine imprisoned Apache escaped from police custody during a prisoner transfer near the town of Globe, Arizona.

Sometime in 1888 the Apache Kid was caught, put on trial in Globe for various crimes, and sentenced to spend the next seven years in Yuma Territorial Prison.

After the trial, on the morning of November 1, 1889, Sheriff Glenn Reynolds arrived at the jail in Safford to pick up eight Apache prisoners and one Mexican who were to be transferred to Casa Grande by stagecoach, a two-day ride, and from there to Yuma by train.

Sheriff Reynolds made arrangements to be taken to Casa Grande by stagecoach owner Eugene Middleton, who had survived several conflicts with the Apaches since 1881.

Around this time Reynolds expressed concern about a section of the road outside of town known as Kelvin Grade, and also left his horse Tex behind so as to ride in the coach with Holmes.

The road was very steep and with the coach loaded with nine prisoners, the horses were not strong enough to pull the wagon up, especially since it had been raining heavily the night before.

When the party reached the grade, seven of the prisoners were taken off as planned, but the Apache Kid and one other man were considered too dangerous and left on board.

Gradually two of the Apaches moved in close to the unsuspecting Reynolds, and after the coach had pulled out of sight, they suddenly pounced on the sheriff to wrest his shotgun from him.

Shorty Sayler, a stagecoach driver, took Reynolds' horse Tex and rode it to Globe, forty miles away, to alert the authorities.

The telegrapher at Globe was Dan Williams, who later said; "I happened to be the receiving operator and hastened to Al Sieber with terrible news, whose comment was, ‘I was afraid of that, and that was my reason for offering the scout escort to Casa Grande.'

Over the next several months, until October 1890, American militias, bounty hunters, and United States Army troops searched the Arizona desert for the escaped prisoners, all of whom were eventually caught or killed except the Kid.

At one point the bounty hunter Mickey Free told Al Sieber that he had trailed the Kid for three months before killing him and carving a tattoo of the letter "W" as proof.

A native named Wallapai Clark also said he shot the Kid while he was trying to steal his horse from a corral, and in 1899, the colonel of the Rurales, Emilio Kosterlitzky, claimed the same when his men killed three Apaches.

This was mostly substantiated by Guadalupe Fimbres Muñoz, who was captured in 1915 during a surprise attack on Apache Juan’s stronghold in the Sierra Madre.