Donley's Wild West Town, a tourist theme park and steakhouse in Union, Illinois, is selling the former Cook County Jail gallows.

Larry Donley bought the gallows in 1977, to be part of his museum of gangster collectibles and Chicago history (He opened the attraction in 1975 originally as Seven Acres Antique Village, apparently as an excuse to display his collection of old phonographs). Over the decades, the business evolved into an Old West theme park for children, complete with a miniature steam-engine train, a trading post, live mules, and a petting zoo.

But soon, no more gallows. "It really doesn't fit into our theme of what we do here," Donley's son Mike told the Chicago Tribune.

The gallows stands a few feet away from an Old West-style town square with a blacksmith, trading post, ice cream parlor, and "Olde Tyme" photography studio. On the lawn underneath the gallows is a mock grave with curled cowboy boots poking up between rocks, along with a sign proclaiming that the late wearer "Got Shot Fer Claim Jumpin'."

Few visitors realize that the gallows were actually used to hang people. Eighty-six inmates died on them between 1887 and 1927, none of them Wild West outlaws. Its first victims were labor activists, sentenced for Chicago's Haymarket Riot that led to the eight-hour workday.

Ww wish that we had seen the gallows on a hypertour visit in the late 1990s, but after looking at a couple of "actual death masks cast from dead outlaws' faces" and a saddle once owned by Annie Oakley's sister (Ethel Laufer, who was a schoolteacher in Yorkville, IL), we left.

Bidding will start Nov. 20 through Mastro Auctions, and will close Dec. 6. The opening bid will be $5,000. [10/21/2006]

February 10, 2012