The MFA trade territory is rich with history from the western expansion. Among those stories, like this one from Corydon, Iowa, Jesse James plays prominent.

In the fall of 1870, Oscar and A. W. Ocobock opened a bank in a one-room frame building at Corydon, county seat of Wayne County, Iowa. Eight months later, the bank was robbed.

About 1 p.m. on Saturday, June 3, 1871, four men rode into Corydon, crossed to the northwest corner of the square and dismounted in front of the Ocobock Bank. One man stayed with the horses, another took up a watch at the bank entrance and the other two entered the bank. Inside, the two drew revolvers and pointed them at Oscar Ocobock, who was alone in the bank. In a matter of minutes, the robbers tied Ocobock hand and foot and looted the bank's cash drawers and safe.

"We now have the original safe, which was in the Ocobock Bank at the time of the robbery," said Brenda DeVore, manager and assistant curator of the Prairie Trails Museum in Corydon. "We also have constructed a replica, showing what the interior of the bank looked like in 1871."

The bank robbers were the notorious Missouri outlaws Jesse and Frank James, along with Cole Younger and Clell Miller. Nearly a year after the robbery, Clell Miller was arrested in Missouri and returned to Corydon to stand trial. However, he was acquitted for lack of evidence.

Whether through planning or luck, the Corydon robbery was a success from the robbers' point of view. They made off with more than $6,000 in gold and greenbacks, and nobody was injured or killed.

The outlaws spent the night before the robbery in a barn on the Alcorn family farm, near the town of Allerton, a few miles south of Corydon. Saturday morning, they saddled up and leisurely rode toward Corydon.

The presence of four strangers in town was scarcely noticed by Corydon citizens. Men were here from all over the area, to hear Henry Clay Dean's speech at the Methodist Church. Dean, a noted orator and sometime preacher, was in Corydon to extol the benefits of an extension of the Missouri, Iowa and Nebraska Railroad (later to become part of the Rock Island) that would bring the railroad to town, provided that Wayne Countians could raise $100,000 or so to help pay for construction.

At the time of the robbery, most of the men in town were at the church listening to Dean. As the robbers rode west out of town, they came abreast of the Methodist Church and its standing-room-only crowd. One of the outlaws dismounted, walked to the door of the church, flung it open and yelled: "Hey, your bank has just been robbed!"

Apparently, the crowd in the church at first thought it was a joke. After all, Corydon hadn't had a bank for very long-and had never had one robbed. But some townsmen decided they should go to the bank to investigate. There, they found Ocobock tied to a chair. The bank had indeed been robbed.

A Captain Littell, a Civil War veteran, hastily organized a posse and set off southwest in pursuit of the robbers. In a grove of trees near Woodland, southwest of Corydon, the posse came upon a spot where the outlaws had evidently rested their horses and split up the loot from the bank robbery. They found currency wrappers and some loose change, but no sign of the James gang, which by now was across the state line in Missouri.

The robbery made a lasting impression on the southern Iowa town. Until a few years ago, Corydon residents staged a Jesse James Days festival during the first weekend in June. The event (now called Summer on the Square) features live music, stage performances and a re-enactment of the 1871 bank robbery.

The James gang made at least one other raid into Iowa. In July 1873, Jesse and Frank James and a half-dozen cohorts robbed a Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific train near Riverton, in southwest Iowa. The outlaws pried loose rails to de-rail the train.

This robbery had a sadder outcome than the Corydon bank job of 2 years earlier. Train engineer John Rafferty died in the wreck and the robbery netted the outlaws less than $2,000, including what they took from passengers.

Perhaps their planning was faultier than it had been at Corydon. The bandits overlooked 3.5 tons of gold bullion that was stashed elsewhere on the train.