Prescott, Arizona, has been a center of Cowboy Culture since 1888, when civic-minded merchants first posted cash prizes for a cowboy tournament,...
A Shallow Faith
Father Emanuel Schneider became the first priest at Tombstone’s Sacred Heart Church in January 1881. He lasted just six months—probably because he...
Nellie Cashman, The Real McCoy: Part 4
Nellie Cashman had the “Luck of the Irish,” to go along with a keen knowledge of geology and business. She’d arrive when a boom town was in its...
Fire Engulfs Paramount Western Ranch
The cost in human life and property from the fires that blazed through California in November 2018 cannot yet be calculated. The cost to Western...
A Hot Ticket
The S.S. California was built in 1848 to take mail and passengers from Panama to California. But its services grew in demand when the Gold Rush...
Big Ben
Ben Thompson, one of the most noted gunmen of the Old West, was a man famed in his own time for his prowess with a pistol. Yet only two biographies...
Erroneous Ellsworth Showdown
Among the many questionable incidents people often repeat about Wyatt Earp’s life story, few reveal the duplicity of his biographer as much as the...
A Storm is Coming
Charlie Storms is best known as an Old West gambler and gunfighter who came up on the short end of a shootout with Luke Short in Tombstone in 1881....
Navajo and Apache Massacre Cave at Canyon Diablo
When a group of Apaches raided a Navajo encampment near the Little Colorado River in 1878 and killed all but three people, the Navajo leaders sought...
Battle of the Plaza
April 16, 1881 Bat Masterson has just covered 1,100 miles, mostly by rail, to come to the aid of his estranged brother Jim. As the Dodge City-bound...
Nellie Cashman, The Story of a Real Life Dime Novel Heroine: Part 1
Many men and women came west in the 19th century to pan out that dream of getting rich; a few did but most didn’t, but none could match success of a...
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
The new Netflix Western anthology film from Joel and Ethan Coen, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, is the best Western comedy since 1969’s Blazing...