Articles
Billy the Tintype

Billy the Tintype

“He is, in all, quite a handsome looking fellow.” That was the opinion of a newspaperman fortunate enough to obtain an interview with the notorious...

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Tumbleweed Wagons

Tumbleweed Wagons

They called them “tumbleweed wagons” because like their namesake, the Russian thistle, they seemed to wander aimlessly across the territory picking...

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What are “long-tailed heroes”?

What are “long-tailed heroes”?

In the book Roughing It, Mark Twain refers to gunfighters as “long-tailed heroes.” What does that mean? Paul Gortarez Phoenix, Arizona Twain was...

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Hartley of the West

Hartley of the West

"I knew that it was something special; Sam (Peckinpah) was terrific, everybody was terrific, especially Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea—who I’d never...

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A Stormy Affair

A Stormy Affair

On August 6, 1895, gunman John Wesley Hardin nearly got into a strange shootout. He and his lover Helen Beulah Mrose were in an El Paso (photo)...

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Losing Control

Losing Control

By the time he died in August 1895, John Wesley Hardin had finished about 200 pages of his autobiography, up to the year 1889. Researchers Chuck...

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Free Trappers

Free Trappers

Basically there were only two types of trappers, the engage, or lowly company employee who worked for wages and the enterprising aristocrat of the...

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The Rendezvous

The Rendezvous

Like gold dust on the mining frontier, beaver pelts acted as the medium of exchange in the mountains. Unique to the American experience was the...

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