Americans have always had a soft spot for flamboyant, devil-may-care criminals and the tales of their escapades and fast living. Add in a doomed love affair, and you’ve really got an enduring hit.
The infamous Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were together just a few short years, meeting in January 1930 and dying in a shootout in May 1934, which added to the romantic appeal. The folklorish couple were the subject of morbid attractions such as the Bonnie and Clyde Ambush Museum in Gibsland, Louisiana and the Bonnie and Clyde Death Car, a bullethole-riddled Ford V8 that toured state fairs, flea markets and car museums across the country before taking up residence in a casino in Primm, Nevada. The website Roadside America even offers a convenient Bonnie and Clyde Bloody Adventure Trail map for dark travelers. Songs have been written, films have been made. There was a Broadway musical about them in 2011.
And, of course, there is an Iowa connection. Just 10 months before their final stand, the Barrow Gang, which Clyde formed in 1932, holed up outside of Des Moines, Iowa near the tiny town of Dexter (population 640 as of the 2020 census — down from the 748 who lived there in 1930). They were fleeing north after a police raid in Platte City, Missouri, and realized while on the run that Clyde’s brother and sister-in-law, Buck and Blanche Barrow, had been injured. The gang found what must have seemed like the perfect place to hide out and tend to their wounded: an abandoned amusement park. (This was long before Batman’s nemesis the Joker made such locations villain chic).
Dexfield Park, built in 1915, was for a time the largest amusement park in Iowa. Its 65 acres sprawled between Dexter and Redfield, and it featured an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a baseball field, a movie screen, a roller rink and a dance hall, in addition to the rides, games and food stands. The park closed in 1928, but locals still occasionally used the area for campouts — including the Girl Scouts. A troop camping in the old pavilion were surprised to encounter other campers while out for an early morning hike in July 1933. They didn’t figure out until later that they’d happened upon the Barrow Gang.
Henry Nye was more suspicious after coming across the camp while out blackberry hunting. He noticed used bandages and bloodied belongings, and returned to surveil the campsite with Dexter police officer John Love. Love reached out to Dallas County Sheriff Clint Knee, who rallied a posse of around 50 law enforcement and civilians from as far away as Des Moines. They set upon the gang at around 5 a.m. on July 24, 1933.
Buck and Blanche ended their criminal careers at Dexfield Park. Still recovering from the head wound he got in Platte City, Buck was shot in the back during the fray and died in a hospital in Perry, Iowa five days later. Blanche was captured by police and remanded to Missouri. She served six years in prison and lived a quiet, peaceful life thereafter.
Bonnie, Clyde and gang member W.D. Jones, however, managed to escape. A posse that had ballooned to 200 surrounded them again in Guthrie Center, Iowa later that day, but they escaped again and continued north past Sioux City.
They would return to Iowa again in 1934, robbing the First National Bank in Stuart — just eight miles southwest of Dexfield Park — on April 16, 1934. Earlier that month, the Barrow gang had killed two patrolmen in Grapevine, Texas on Easter Sunday, and a constable in Commerce, Oklahoma. Bonnie and Clyde would meet their own bloody end in a firefight with law enforcement near Bienville Parish, Louisiana on May 23, 1934.
This article is from Little Village’s 2025 Peak Iowa issue, a collection of stories drawn from Hawkeye State history, culture and legend. Browse dozens of Peak Iowa tales here.
