During his lifetime, Rockwell attracted the curious, the celebrity seekers, and the myth makers. To journalists, authors, and world travelers he was as well known as Brigham Young. He became a legend as a rough-and-ready frontiersman, a scout, a marksman, a man of iron nerve and a man of unswerving loyalty.

Orrin Porter Rockwell died of natural causes on 9 June 1878 in Salt Lake City, while awaiting trial on Aiken murder charges. Rockwell's notoriety followed him to the grave, and grew, unencumbered by fact. The Salt Lake Tribune editorialized that he "participated in at least a hundred murders . . . ." He has remained in the eyes of the public one of the best known of the early Mormon settlers of Utah.

See: Harold Schindler, Orrin Porter Rockwell: Man of God, Son of Thunder (1966; second edition 1983); and Frank Esshom, Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah (1913).

Harold Schindler