Pliney Gardner

Pliney Fisk Gardner (c. 1835 - 1893) was an Old West gunfighter and outlaw. Gardner was born during the 1830s and migrated to California during the 1850s where he made his living as a gambler, earning a reputation as a hard character. He shot a man to death in 1859 at Sonora, California and was indicted with a charge of murder, but released from custody. Gardner then made his living as a hired gun for a mining company being a member of a notorious Daly Gang that terrorized the goldfields between Aurora, Nevada and Carson City during the 1860s in the Nevada Territory.

After numerous shootings and a brutal murder, local citizens of Nevada established the "Citizens' Protective Association", and within a week gang leader John Daly and members Johnny McDowell, William Buckley, and "Massey" Masterson were caught and hanged outside Armory Hall in Aurora. Gardner was also arrested for murder, but was deemed to have not played a part in the murder. Gardner and other gang members were banished from the Aurora area and Gardner then migrated back to California where he lived off his reputation as a feared gunfighter.

In the 1880s he owned a saloon called the Oasis on the banks of the San Joaquin River at Hills Ferry, California, in Stanislaus County and it was said that "many men disappeared after having entered this joint". This place contained as many as fifty women during its heyday and was the favorite dance hall of the town. Gardner was said to have frequently "shot up the town", and it was often said that the constables were conveniently absent from the town when this would happen.

He was always single, never having married nor having fathered any children like many gunmen. Pliny Gardner was a saloon keeper during the 1880s and a liquor dealer in the 1890s until he died in his sixties from a stomach complication, in 1893, at Newman, California. He was buried at the Hills Ferry Cemetery.