Edward Franklin Bowers
Edward Franklin Bowers (June 27, 1838 – January 5, 1879) was an American lawman in the Old West. He served as the sheriff of Yavapai County in the Arizona Territory from 1874 to 1878 and was named a Deputy U.S. Marshal in 1878.
He was born in Greenfield, New Hampshire, the 11th of 12 children. As a child he was bound out to work on a farm and left home at age 12. At 19 he headed west, trying mining and prospecting in Kansas, Colorado and California before moving to the Arizona Territory in 1865.
In 1869 he married Olive Joan Ehle and they had four children in Skull Valley, near Prescott. In 1872 he became Skull Valley’s postmaster. He ran for sheriff in 1872 and was elected in 1874 and again in 1876, serving four years.
As sheriff he dealt with cattle thieves, gunmen and murder cases. The county’s first hanging for a crime occurred in 1875. In 1877 he deputized Virgil Earp to help stop a group of men shooting up saloons in Prescott. In a later incident, Earp killed a man, one of the events leading up to the famous O.K. Corral story. Bowers said he took the job “to disarm and arrest those men” because he was sworn to duty.
His son, Edward F. Bowers Jr., would later become undersheriff of Maricopa County and was killed in the line of duty in 1921.
Edward Franklin Bowers died of pneumonia in Prescott in January 1879, just days after his term as sheriff ended. His funeral drew the attention of the territory’s lawmakers, who paused to attend.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 11:12 (CET).