What was the availability of eyeglasses like in the Old West? Emily Downey Mission Viejo, California Corrective eyeglasses have been around for...
What Was the Availability of Eyeglasses Like in the Old West?
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Articles
The Emperor Ruled San Francisco
Joshua Norton spent more than 30 years in San Francisco, from 1849 to 1880, and for most of them he was the self-proclaimed “Emperor” Norton. He...
Omaha is Still “All Aboard”
The first piece of track. The very first spike. It all began here, in Omaha, Nebraska. That’s where the Union Pacific began the race to Utah in...
Justice for a Journalist
James King of William (he gave himself the last part of that name to distinguish himself from other James Kings) was a crusading newspaper editor in...
So you Want to be a Cowboy
There’s been many a young man or woman who dreamed of climbing into a time machine and transporting themselves back to the days when the West was...
Saratoga, Wyoming
The name Fenimore Chatterton doesn’t ring many bells in Western history, but it does around Saratoga, Wyoming. The businessman and politician...
The Notorious Dutch Henry
Dutch Henry Borne (also spelled Born and Bourne) was one of the most prevalent and notorious livestock thieves in the West. It’s surprising he isn’t...
The Lens of History
Since the completion of the transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869, the entrepreneurial “Big Four” rail barons of the Central Pacific...
Gunfight at the Chandler Ranch
According to Cochise County Deputy Sheriff, Billy Breakenridge, Richard “Zwing Hunt,” was one of the baddest of the bad hombres in that...
What History Has Taught Me: Dolan Ellis
As a kid, we lived on a small farm in eastern Kansas, where I literally had no playmates. My play consisted of doing little farm chores (gathering...
A Warning for Abolitionists
Anthony Bewley was a Methodist pastor south of Ft. Worth just before the Civil War. He was outspokenly abolitionist, and that angered his...
Morgan Woodward
Actor Morgan Woodward is known for many things, most of them unpleasant: he’s so good at playing bad that, “although it was an unwritten law that no...