There’s a Butch Cassidy story still widely told across southern Utah, where the notorious outlaw was raised. It sees a young Butch, alone and on the run, riding up to a small ranch as night descends. Believing he has shaken off his pursuers, the hungry fugitive asks if he can buy himself a hot dinner. The elderly couple inside happily oblige, but as the dishes are cleared, Butch notices the old woman sobbing. Her husband explains – they’ve fallen behind on repayments and tomorrow a debt collector is coming. If they cannot find the huge sum they owe, he’ll repossess their home.

Standing to leave, Butch pulls a bulging sack of gold coins from his saddlebag. “Here’s your debt and more,” he says. “Just be sure to get a bill of receipt.”

The Wild Bunch, with Butch Cassidy far right Credit: Utah Historical Society

Heading back down the trail, Butch camps for the night. The next day, he watches from behind a rock as the collector leaves the ranch. As the man approaches, Butch calmly steps into his path, steals the gold at gunpoint, then gallops off in a cloud of dust.

Even in 2016 – the 150th anniversary of his birth – Cassidy is still revered as the Robin Hood of the American west, the Robber King who took from deep pockets and gave to empty hands. It’s a luminous legacy which only shone brighter after Paul Newman’s acclaimed portrayal of him in the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. But what of the real Butch Cassidy – the bandit beneath the hero worship and the Hollywood halo?

Horseriding at Torrey, Capitol Reef National Park Credit: Â© imageBROKER / Alamy Stock Photo/imageBROKER / Alamy Stock Photo,imageBROKER / Alamy Stock Photo

Next year, two new museums dedicated to Cassidy are scheduled to open in Utah. The first will focus on his early life in pretty Circleville, 200 miles south of Salt Lake City. The second is planned for the old frontier town of Hanksville, near Canyonlands National Park. It was here that a fully fledged Cassidy and his motley Wild Bunch – including Kid Curry, Elzy Lay and, of course, the Sundance Kid – would resupply their remote Robbers Roost hideout, often drinking and gambling with the locals.

“There’s an awful lot of hogwash talked and written about Butch, so I hope these new museums help set the record straight,” says Bill Betenson, Cassidy’s biographer and great-grandnephew, when I meet him for lunch in Salt Lake City. “The main problem is that the Wild Bunch wanted to cover their tracks and they were damn good at it. You add 100 years to that equation and it’s extremely difficult to nail down the truth.” Most of the bona fide Butch facts we do have are contained in Betenson’s meticulous biography, Butch Cassidy, My Uncle: A Family Portrait, which becomes my unorthodox guidebook for a week spent driving across Utah’s rugged wilds on Cassidy’s trail.

From Salt Lake City it’s an easy two-and-a-half-hour drive to quaint little Beaver (population 3,401), for a quick look at the house where Cassidy was born Robert LeRoy Parker in 1866, the son of an English father and Scottish mother.

There’s far richer hunting in Circleville – an hour’s drive east via handsome, undulating Fishlake National Forest. On the outskirts of town, the two-room cabin where Cassidy and his 12 younger siblings grew up remains completely untouched – and unlocked – by the side of the road. It was here, in the golden fields fringing this little house on the prairie, that Cassidy learnt to ride, lasso and shoot – becoming the best marksman in the valley by the age of just 16.

This time next year, the old Parker cabin will become the centrepiece of Circleville’s new Butch Cassidy Museum, complete with a restaurant, car park and 4WD tours. But for now it remains exactly as it was the day an ambitious 18-year-old – inspired by local rustler Mike Cassidy – spurred his horse towards a life of crime, taking Cassidy’s name with him (“Butch” came afterwards, following a short stint working as a butcher in Wyoming to make ends meet). At the heart of Circleville sits Butch Cassidy’s Hideout Motel and Grill, the walls full of Wild Bunch photographs and Wanted posters. If people aren’t coming here for owner Kelli Cummings’s renowned apple pie, they’re coming to talk Butch.

“Everybody around here has a Butch story, and you wouldn’t believe the number of people who come in claiming to be related to him,” Cummings says. “I ask them all the same question: why are you calling him Butch? His family always called him Bob.”

Butch Cassidy's childhood home Credit: Getty Images/Sarah Morgan,Sarah Morgan

A number of Cassidy’s siblings lived their entire lives here, and almost all are buried in Circleville’s cemetery alongside their British parents. As a result, there are plenty of descendants, and plenty of conflicting tales. There is one story, however, on which everybody agrees – Butch Cassidy did not die in Bolivia in 1908.

“We all know how the movie ends, but Butch didn’t die down there in that Bolivian shoot-out,” Cummings says. “He was way too clever to be caught like that. Plenty of old-timers tell stories about him coming back to visit his family here in Circleville well into the Twenties.”

It’s a similar narrative in Torrey, a charming little township another hour east. Here, from the edge of Capitol Reef National Park, it’s easy to access the Outlaw Trail – a loose network of cattle paths winding from Mexico to Montana, frequently used by the Wild Bunch to escape the law. I saddle up to ride a short section with local operator Hondoo Rivers and Trails.

Riding out here amid the burnt rocks, red dust and cottonwood copses feels a little like experiencing a western from the other side of a TV screen. That is hardly surprising: hundreds of the films, including many scenes from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, were filmed in Utah’s imperious national parks.

That evening I arrive in Hanksville, where the Wild Bunch would provision their Robbers Roost base from the general store, owned by Cassidy’s friend and former employer Charlie Gibbons. It’s here that the second major Cassidy museum is planned for 2017. Gibbons’s great-grandson Kim Wilson – universally known as “Buffalo Bubs” – is the town’s mayor today.

“Everybody loved Butch; he had a lot of allies in these parts, which is why he was so difficult to catch!” Bubs says. “Grandpa Charlie said he used to pay his debts in $20 gold pieces, which blew peoples’ minds. He would plan every job meticulously, particularly the fresh horse relays for the getaway. There are still plenty of wild horses roaming about Robbers Roost descended from those Wild Bunch relays.”

A bedroom at Zion Mountain Ranch Credit: Sweetly Photography

“Robbers Roost” is in fact a loose term for a large plateau in the San Rafael mountains, above Hanksville. Up here there are a handful of sites where Cassidy and his gang would hide for months, avoiding the prices on their heads. One such spot is the old Cottrell Cabin, hidden in a tight box canyon at the heart of the Roost. It’s so remote that it’s a day trip from Hanksville to get there and back in a 4WD truck, but it’s worth every minute.

The cabin’s rickety stone chimney and mantelpiece are still intact, sheltered on three sides by tight, bullet-peppered canyon walls. It’s a perfect natural fortress: near impossible to find today without the aid of GPS, let alone for lawmen back in the 1890s. You can almost smell the leather and cordite and hear the laughter of the fun-loving bandits.

Four miles up the road in Helper, there are a number of surviving artefacts at the excellent Western Mining and Railroad Museum. “People forget that Elzy Lay was Butch’s right-hand man,” says James Boyd, the museum’s director, as he points out the gang in photographs. “They focus way too much on the Sundance Kid.”

One local man who is definitely guilty of that crime is Robert Redford. Playing Sundance opposite Newman’s Butch, he loved Utah so much that he bought a ranch near the town of Provo, naming it after his character. Today it’s a boutique hotel and ski resort, full of Butch and Sundance memorabilia.

Just one question remains: if Butch Cassidy died of old age nearly 30 years after the infamous Bolivian shoot-out – as pretty much anyone in southern Utah will tell you – where’s the body?

“My great-grandmother, Butch’s little sister Lula, was very clear about that,” says Betenson when I call him to ask. “She said that where he was buried, and under what name, was a family secret; that he was chased all his life and now he had a chance to finally rest in peace – and that’s the way it must be.”

Getting there

Bon Voyage (0800 316 0194; bon-voyage.co.uk) offers an eight-night Butch Cassidy Trail fly-drive from £1,595 per person for two adults sharing. The price includes return flights to Salt Lake City with Delta Air Lines (delta.com), car hire and accommodation at Hotel Monaco (Salt Lake City), Butch Cassidy Hideout Café & Hotel (Circleville), Torrey Schoolhouse b&b (Torrey), Whispering Pines Motel (Hanksville), Ramada Price (Price) and Sundance Mountain Resort (Sundance), above.

What to read

Butch Cassidy, My Uncle: A Family Portrait by Bill Betenson is published by High Plains Press (£15.37, amazon.co.uk).

More information

visitutah.com/uk