Fred Starr: San Juan County’s most infamous bank robber

Compiled by Grant P. Taylor,
Hole-in-the-Rock Foundation board member and secretary
Saturday, July 19, 2025, will mark the 100th anniversary of the most infamous criminal act that ever occurred in San Juan County.
On the evening of Sunday, July 19, 1925, Fred Starr snuck into the San Juan Co-op Store, undetected. Fred was a newly hired employee who had likely seen money being locked away in the co-op safe every evening and must have decided that he would help himself to it.
Although he called himself Fred Starr, his name was actually Alfred Earl Wright. Alfred had served in the army in World War I, but circumstances must have changed for him.
Although at one point in the late 1800’s San Juan County had been an outpost for outlaws, the new Mormon settlement of Bluff City had brought law and order to the area in the 1890s.
Fred Starr, once inside the store, took a few sticks of dynamite, which likely had come from the general stock at the store, and placed them next to the safe.
A rural general store in the 1920s would have stocked both dynamite and kerosene. Fred would have run a fuse wire a distance away, and for some reason unknown to us, he stayed inside to watch the grand event.
Late that night, about 11:15 p.m., Fred lit the fuse, and the sparks began, inch by inch, to get closer to the sticks of dynamite.
Many have wondered what Fred might have been thinking about when the sparks were just inches away from those sticks. However, we’ll never know his last thoughts.
One Bluff diarist reported hearing the blast and then cries for help from within the building. The town’s folk came running to see that the building was already fully engulfed in flames.
Little could have been done but to watch as the building was consumed by fire. The stone building collapsed on itself when the supporting structure was destroyed.
The death certificate listed Fred Starr’s cause of death as: “Accidental burns and rock falling…”.
Residents of Bluff reported that the entire building was destroyed, along with a majority of its inventory. It sat for years as a memory and a pile of rubble. Blocks and stone from the building were eventually hauled off and used for other buildings in the town of Bluff.
Co-op Store’s Background
Two years after their arrival in the Bluff valley, the San Juan pioneers launched a cooperative mercantile. The co-op, which was originally housed in a log structure at the northeast corner of the Bluff Fort, provided an outlet where locals could sell their goods and buy necessities.
The co-op proved very successful from its opening. It provided revenues that helped sustain Bluff through the difficult times of floods and crop failures.
It also provided an outlet where Native Americans could trade their wares and make a profit from their handiwork. Excess goods were loaded into freight wagons and taken to Durango, where they were sold or exchanged.
During the co-op’s peak years, this exchange of freight to and from Durango, Colorado was a weekly event.
Albert R. Lyman recorded in his diary in 1919:
“The Co-op store was organized in Bluff on April 24th, 1882. The store opened on the 11th of June, stocked to meet the needs of the people in the fort, and to trade with the Indians. On the 6th of the following November, the store declared a ten percent dividend.
“It paid well from the first. They bought Navajo wool and pelts and blankets, loaded their freight teams to and from Durango making the freighting so profitable that each stockholder seized eagerly on his turn when it came to make the trip.
“This local freighting, and revenue from the store, provided a way for the people to stay in San Juan long enough at a time to make a start in the cattle business which afterwards became their stronghold.
“The Navajos came with their produce to trade in the little log store, which was generally surrounded with a motley tangle of cayuse saddle ponies, rawhide ropes, bundles of wool and pelts, and snarling mangy dogs.
“Trading was, to the Navajos, a rather festive occasion, deliberate and long drawn-out. They camped nearby until it was finished to their satisfaction, crowding against the rude lumber counter in noisy talk and laughter, and always a stifling cloud of tobacco smoke.
“Besides that first dividend, which the store declared when it was less than five months old, on May 7, 1882, when it was still less than eleven months old, it declared another dividend of 25 percent.”
In the late 1890s, the log co-op was replaced with a two-story stone structure. The upper level was set aside as the community’s dance hall.
Jens Neilson, bishop of Bluff for almost 26 years, recorded that the stone building was completed enough to hold a holiday dance in 1899.
The San Juan Co-op Store would have been the pride of Bluff residents and the hub of conversation and industry for the next 25 years. It was the largest store in the area. It was a multipurpose building.
In addition to the rural general store, it included a United States post office. It was where cowboys and farmers got together and learned of farm prices and the latest information on their neighbors’ doings.
It was where women purchased staples and goods for their families. It was where children came to buy penny candy to satisfy their sweet tooth.
By the 1920’s, Bluff’s population had greatly diminished, and the once thriving community cooperative had been sold to John LaRay Hunt, who continued operating the store until its untimely demise at the hands of Fred Starr.
After the robbery and fire, the ground lay empty for over 85 years. Then in 2011, money was raised by the Hole-in-the-Rock-Foundation.
A groundbreaking was held with Utah Governor Gary Herbert moving a little Bluff soil to mark the beginning of the construction of a replica of the San Juan Co-Operative Company stone building.
Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the co-operative store began to emerge from the dust. Joe Hurst, owner of TriHurst Construction, laid the 40x60 foot concrete pad and followed the plans designed by Archiplex, a Salt Lake City architectural firm.
A grant from the federal Scenic By-ways, along with generous donations from the James and Beverley Sorenson, George and Delores Dore Eccles, and Gayle and Larry Miller foundations, together with other generous private donors, meant the building could be restored.
The building and grounds were dedicated in 2013 by Elder Marcus B. Nash, a member of the Seventy, who was serving in the Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
In the spring of 2014, additional monies were raised to apply a sandstone veneer to the building. Stone came from the Kumen Jones ruin (a home on the Bluff Fort property that had been partially destroyed many years ago) and the Steven, Craig, and Barry Simpson family donated stone from their property at Twin Rocks.
Corrine Roring, past president of the Hole in the Rock Foundation, had also gathered stones from the original stone building that were lying unused throughout the city of Bluff, with their owner’s permission.
Vance Seeley, a local stone mason, carefully replicated the stone front of the store using a picture taken by Charles Goodman, a professional local photographer, soon after the original building was completed in 1899.
The 7” thick stone veneer gives the appearance of a solid stone building. The base stones look like the large, foundational 2 and 4-man stones that would have originally encompassed the base of the building.
The interior post and beam construction adds to the historicity of the building. Interior fixtures were built by Jack Powers, a historical restorationist from Farmington, UT. All his work was built in his single car garage after much research and visits to similar period sites.
Grant and Dell Taylor, brothers, used their painting skills to apply milk paint purchased in Boston to create the historic feel of an 1880s general store.
Today’s gift shop is a unique experience for visitors because much of the inventory is created by volunteers and Senior Missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints serving at Bluff Fort.
From hand-pieced quilts, handknit items, Topsy Turvey dolls, and woven rugs to wood breadboards, biscuit cutters, and homemade children’s games, there is something for everyone to remember their visit to Bluff Fort.
Also inside this replica co-operative store is an amazing video experience that shares the story of hardship and determination to follow a Prophet of God, narrated by the stories of Bluff’s original settlers.
The video brings to light that this hearty band of pioneers were just ordinary people who had the indomitable spirit to blaze a trail to the southeastern corner of the Utah Territory.
Almost 75,000 visitors visit Bluff Fort Historic Site each year, learning the stories of faith, courage, and determination of the Hole in the Rock pioneers. Many visitors claim a special feeling comes to them as they learn of the undaunted spirit of those early settlers.
Kumen Jones, one of the original Hole in the Rock pioneers, said of this group, “Surely the hand of Providence had been over the traveling pilgrims. No serious accidents had befallen any of them…”
Among these pioneers, during their six-month expedition, there were no lives lost, and two babies were born along the way.
The Fort is located on Highway 191 in Bluff. Corinne Roring, a long time Monticello resident and president of the Hole-in-the-Rock-Foundation for over 20 years, had a head stone placed in the Bluff Cemetery at the final resting place of the infamous Fred Starr.