The Mussel Slough Tragedy was a dispute over land titles between settlers and the Southern Pacific Railroad (SP) that took place on May 11, 1880, on a farm located 5.6 miles (9 km) northwest of Hanford, California, in the central San Joaquin Valley, leaving seven people dead.

[7] Lobbying by land speculators led Secretary of the Interior Orville Hickman Browning to reject the SP's route change, stating that it violated the company's original charter.

There were Civil War refugees from the American South, owners of even-numbered lots who either sold their legitimate claims or were attempting to expand their holdings, merchants who lived in nearby towns, and land speculators.

It encouraged them to file applications so that they would be given the first option to purchase when sales began, but squatter leaders argued that doing so would affirm the company's rights, which they still believed to be invalid.

[2]However, when the settlers, who had spent a great deal of money and time in building their houses and farms, attempted to acquire their land, the asking price was significantly greater than that ($8–$20/acre[7]), which the SP attributed to rising property values because of the laying of the railroad, although many settlers believed it was due to their own improvements such as irrigation, housing, fences, and barns.

The Southern Pacific then filed and won a lawsuit in 1878 against the settlers, amidst allegations of court bias (former California Governor Leland Stanford was also president of SP).

[13] Still, the Settler's League, which was formed in 1878 in opposition to the SP's Mussel Slough actions,[12] even attempted to appeal directly to President Rutherford B. Hayes during his visit to San Francisco in 1880,[15] presenting him a petition which read, Through sheer energy and perseverance by the investment of our means ... and relying firmly upon the rights we had acquired as American citizens, and upon the pledges of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company [in regard to low land prices], we converted a desert into one of the garden spots of the State.

[24] On May 11, 1880, a picnic was being held in Hanford which was to feature a speech by pro-settler former California Supreme Court Justice David S. Terry (who was actually unable to appear),[25] when word reached the picnickers that four "railroad men" - U.S.

However, the rumors were only partially true; in addition to serving eviction notices, the group was also purchasing land (and any improvements) from settlers who had refused to pay SP's asking price.

[23] The parties met at the homestead of Henry D. Brewer three miles (4.8 km) north of Grangeville (which is near Hanford), the marshal's group having just been at Braden's house.

Crow and one of the settler's party, James Harris, and Mills Hartt had previously threatened to kill any "sandlappers" (a derisive term for homesteaders, equivalent to the modern day "redneck"[26]), and an argument broke out between them.

[13] Crow, a skilled marksman who was armed with a shotgun, jumped down from his wagon and opened fire, killing Harris and four other members of the settler's party.

[13][27] After the initial exchange of gunfire ended, Crow fled the scene, but was shot in the back about 1.5 mi (2.4 km) away by an unknown assailant before he could reach safety.

[13] Afterwards, seventeen people were indicted by a federal grand jury and five were found guilty of willfully interfering with a marshal in performance of his duties (Braden, Patterson, Pryor, Purcell, and John J. Doyle, a leader in the Settler's League).

In the end, most people (including Doyle, who later reconciled and became good friends with Collis Potter Huntington, one of the SP's leaders[33]) simply stayed where they were and purchased the land.

[34] The Mussel Slough affair was seized upon by newspaper editors as well as a number of popular writers soon after the tragic shootout, as an example of corporate greed and the abuses of freewheeling market capitalism around the start of the 20th century.

Richard Orsi's suggests in his history of the Southern Pacific, Sunset Limited that some common misconceptions about the Mussel Slough affair have been perpetuated through the mythic retellings of Morrow, Post, Royce, and Norris, among others.

[36] The significance of the Mussel Slough myth in the history of California and the Southern Pacific Railroad is evident from a quote by Theodore Roosevelt, who as president focused considerable time and energy in redressing the wrongs and abuses of corporate monopolies throughout the U.S. After reading Norris' The Octopus, Roosevelt stated he was "inclined to think [...] that conditions were worse in California than elsewhere.

Richard Maxwell Brown argues in No Duty to Retreat that the Mussel Slough shootout did not fit the mold of the gunfight/hero myth, which usually ignores such factors as ideology, and social and economic conflict, thus not implanting it in the lore of the American Old West.