Touted in his time as one of the great men of the West Stephen Wallace Dorsey was a Reconstruction carpetbagger who went to Arkansas and finagled and bribed his way into getting elected to the US Senate after living only two years in the state before heading West to seek his fortune From a fraudulent New Mexico land claim to taking up mining claims and real estate in Southern California he used sheer cunning and guile to manipulate the system of the Gilded Age to his own ends Dorsey was a major presence in early New Mexico which was no holds barred frontier corruption with his flair for excess Excess is in everything he did his manipulative 600 000 acre land grab his political shenanigans his excessive drinking his extravagant lifestyle always on display In his fraudulent dealings he was caught out not by the law but those more conniving than he was His fantastic mansion in the middle of a still today empty prairie in northeastern New Mexico was of state wide historical importance before the state could no longer afford to keep it