SAMMYVILLE -- Sam Horrell, owner of Oregon's notorious "outlaw town," has hung up his six-gun.

The 81-year-old "sheriff, mayor and 'hanger'" -- his word for hangman -- has bowed to family demands to put away his revolver and stop dynamiting stumps.

"He doesn't like it, I'll tell you, it just about drives him crazy," says his wife, Annabelle.

Horrell has been a familiar figure around northeastern Oregon since at least the 1960s, instantly recognizable for his holstered gun, bib overalls and slouch hat. But he's slowing down and developing memory problems, triggering the advent of a new era and new sheriff in Sammyville.

A La Grande judge last year appointed Daryl Logan, Annabelle's daughter, as guardian and conservator of the Horrells' affairs and of the town, population 22.

When Logan assumed her new responsibilities, she made the decision to corral Horrell's firearms and lock up his dynamite. His 130 guns are in a steel safe and the dynamite is under lock and key. The man who once kept order and administered rough justice in the unincorporated town that bears his name can no longer get at them.

The legend of Sammyville

The history:

Sam Horrell's ancestors were Wild West cowboys and the subjects of the book, "Bad Blood. The Life and Times of the Horrell Brothers," by Frederick Nolan, centering on an 1877 feud in Lampasas County, Texas, that cost nine lives.

"Remorseless and unrelenting, always fighting under the black flag. They were utter strangers to fear," wrote the Lampasas Leader newspaper of the Horrells in a Jan. 26, 1889, article. The surviving Horrells headed north to Oregon, and Sam arrived in the canyon where Sammyville now stands with his parents in 1938 at age 8.

Town beginnings:

They had no electricity until 1953 and no telephones until 1958. Sam only made it through third grade in school. But the town he built has a centralized water system and a network of surprisingly good dirt streets. The dwellings have indoor plumbing and electricity, and he maintained a fire truck and snowplows capable of dealing with 8 feet of snow, which he insists the town occasionally gets.

Land use:

Sammyville is that rarity in Oregon, a remote community where all the property and dwellings are owned by a single landlord, says Hanley Jenkins, the Union County planner in La Grande. It's in a timber-grazing zone, but remains as it is under a deal struck in the 1980s to "grandfather in" 14 existing dwellings.

Future:

Daryl and Tom Logan, who now manage the town, say Sammyville's going to be around for a while. "We're going to stay here," Tom Logan says. "We're going to keep the same traditions going."

Horrell never actually shot or hanged anyone. But life here without a gun-toting Sam Horrell is still a bit of a shock, says longtime resident Jamie Weirauch. He was on hand more than once when Horrell advised a drug dealer or other mischief maker to get out of town or risk lead poisoning.

"Sam's law was Sam's law up here," Weirauch says.

Horrell always cooperated when police came to Sammyville with a warrant, says Union County Undersheriff Craig Ward. Succeeding him "will take somebody with a steady hand."

"He's iconic," Ward says.

Ramshackle town

Sammyville is a warren of dirt streets threading among rundown buildings, ramshackle trailers and lofty pines in a lonely, forested canyon northwest of Elgin. Some buildings are constructed around trees that poke through their roofs because Horrell had the eccentric notion that trees shouldn't be cut unnecessarily.

Dozens of abandoned cars, stacks of firewood, trash and lumber are scattered among chicken coops and penned goats. The town has no traffic signals, sidewalks, mini-marts or other businesses.

The Horrells' income derives from 14 cabin and trailer rentals, ranging from $150 to $350 a month. The tenants generally have been poor and unemployed. Some ended up here with no place else to go or had reasons for lying low.

Horrell's 88-acre fiefdom earned its ominous reputation when residents over the years followed their founding father's lead and openly wore sidearms. Gregory Alvin Cook, now doing time for the 2009 triple murder of three friends in nearby Elgin, once lived here.

A brush with Tinseltown perpetuated the roughneck hamlet's notoriety. The f

came out in 1999 and was written from a screenplay "based on the true-life outlaw town in the wilds of Oregon, a place where no one dares to go," according to studio hype at the time.

The movie starred Chase Masterson, perhaps best known for her long-running role in TV's "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," and Paul Wadleigh, who portrayed Horrell as a reclusive and remorseless killer. Re-released last year on DVD, the film carries the new title, "Dark Woods."

Cleaning it up

Daryl Logan hopes to clean up the town and bring in a more genteel class of tenants. All of 4 feet 10, she's a former librarian and nurse's aide who doesn't pack a gun and is almost elfin in the presence of her stepdad.

"There used to be a lot of bad people up here," says Logan, 60, who grew up in Pennsylvania and was almost 20 when her mom married Horrell in the early '70s. She and her husband Tom,, have had more than 40 abandoned cars dragged away and replaced several buildings with new ones, at a cost of $30,000.

Sammyville has a new rule for tenants: It doesn't matter what you did before coming here, but if you commit a felony, you're gone, said Tom Logan, a former high school biology teacher who spent 20 years in the Marines.

He insists Sammyville's outlaw image "is more reputation than reality, more legend than real." Then, almost in the next breath, he admits to strapping on a gun occasionally himself, when he needs to talk to a criminally inclined tenant.

"I only wear it when I expect trouble," he says.

Colorful past

It might prove difficult to erase Horrell's indelible stamp on Sammyville. Tales of his colorful exploits have taken on a life of their own. One locally famous story has it that Horrell once put a bullet through the screen of the Opera House Theater in nearby Elgin when a cinema outlaw tried to bushwhack John Wayne. Horrell has played it cagey when asked to verify the account: "I never did shoot a hole in it, that I can remember," he said several years ago.

"It really happened," says Daryl Logan with a rueful smile.

Then there was Horrell's long-running habit of waking up the town at 5 a.m. each July Fourth by blowing up a stump. The Logans locked up his dynamite to prevent anymore unwanted explosions.

But Horrell still checks on it -- which poses a problem of how to get rid of the stuff. "If I take his dynamite, he's going to get mad," says Tom Logan.

Less well-known is that the Horrells were always a soft touch for a sad story. Some tenants are more than a year behind in rent and one owed $27,000 in back rent before being evicted, the Logans say.

Sam Horrell now spends much of his time with Annabelle in the couple's home. He's endured two near-fatal accidents in 12 years. The most recent in April 2010 involved a pickup that he crashed into a tree. In the other, a bulldozer rolled on him.

Now, he gets confused and has to be kept from driving a car or heavy equipment or doing many of the things he always enjoyed.

Still, Annabelle says, "He's a tough old bird."

He sits in his living room wearing his trademark bib overalls, his old hat nearby, watching a mule deer walk down the middle of Sammyville's main street.

"That is his chair," Annabelle says softly. "This is where he likes to sit, and he likes to look down the road."

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