BIOGRAPHY
David Beach’s interest in history is a long standing one arising from his days growing up in Chanute, KS and his love of reading as many history books as he could check out of the local library as he grew up in southeast Kansas. During summer breaks Mr. Beach would travel the back roads of his locality, finding old cemeteries and would read microfilms of old newspapers, trying to connect the stories of lost towns and vanished people in his area. This research over several years has led to his current career as published author and amateur historian.
His first book is titled How Did the Whiskey Go Down at Ladore? which chronicles the history of the lost town of Ladore, KS in Neosho County. The town had a reputation as a wild “end of the tracks” railroad town in which whiskey and wildness went hand in hand. The book gives a much
fuller history of the town, including the complete story of the mass lynching of a gang of desperados in 1870 and the town’s geographical and local political importance as the location of the founding of the organization known as the “Settlers’ Protective Association of the Osage Ceded Lands,” a group of militant settlers and citizens who fought an extensive battle against railroad land claims to property in the two counties.
His second book is titled The Great Osage Ceded Land Case which goes into the full details of the legal battles that occurred between the Leavenworth, Lawrence, and Galveston and Missouri, Kansas, and Texas railroad companies against the settlers in Neosho and Labette counties. It tells the tale of citizens standing up for their rights
against the machinations of railroad corporations in trying to secure rights to their land claims along the lines of the two railroads. It also covers the exit of the Osage Indians from their reservation in southern Kansas as this controversy was occurring.
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Mr. Beach's third book is titled Beyond Coffeyville: Emmett Dalton and the Mythology of the Dalton Gang. This book chronicles the history of the Dalton Gang before its final bloody fate at Coffeyville, KS in 1892, as well as the events of their attempted bank robberies in that town on October 5, 1982. However, the main thrust of the book is to look at the life of Emmett Dalton after Coffeyville as he served a long prison term for his crimes and then upon leaving prison became a movie star and film producer in Hollywood, CA at the early days of the founding of the motion picture industry. Emmett Dalton founded several production companies and also served as a public advocate for prison reform and against capital punishment. The book chronicles how the reformation of a notorious bandit occurred and explores the legacy of a complicated historical figure in modern social media terms.