HISTORY1 - Tucson's Hotel Congress Fire and the Capture of John Dillinger
In my first group of history articles on this blog, I want to provide a flavor of my recent writing that I collected and self-published in three electronic books available for reading on my website, ringbrothershistory.com , under “Bob’s Projects.” This article is adapted from Tucson Reflections - Living History from the Old Pueblo. For ten months in 1933, John Dillinger and his gang terrorized the Midwest with multiple bank robberies, wild chases, daring prison breaks, and violent machine gun battles. In January, 1934 Dillinger and three of his gang were “laying low” in Tucson, two gang members at the Congress Hotel, while the police and FBI were madly searching back east for “Public Enemy No. 1.” The three-story Congress Hotel was built in 1919 - the same year that the nation’s first municipally owned airport opened in Tucson. On the morning of January 23, 1934, a fire broke out in the basement of the hotel. The first alert was by telephone at 7:16 am as record