Roy Bean

Roy Bean was a saloonkeeper and justice of the peace in remote west Texas during the late nineteenth century. Calling himself the “Law West of the Pecos,” he held court in his saloon and became famous for eccentric rulings, self-promotion and admiration of actress Lillie Langtry.

Many stories about hangings and arbitrary justice were exaggerated or invented. Bean nevertheless became an enduring symbol of improvised frontier authority. Roy Bean was born in Mason County and died in Langtry.

In Larry McMurtry’s Streets of Laredo, A railway company hires him to pursue Joey Garza, a young Mexican marksman whose attacks on trains have made him both feared and difficult to locate. Call’s pursuit draws Pea Eye Parker, Lorena and Garza’s mother Maria into separate journeys across Texas and the borderlands. Encounters with John Wesley Hardin, Judge Roy Bean and Charles Goodnight place the fictional chase inside a frontier whose legendary figures are ageing, dying or becoming part of history. Roy Bean is treated fictionally in Zane Grey’s West of the Pecos.