State Historian of Texas Bill O’Neal’s latest book, John Chisum: Frontier Cattle King, explores the life and times of Chisum’s legendary role as a...
Cattle King of the West
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Articles
True West’s Ultimate Historic Travel Guide: The Pacific Coast
Travelers to the Pacific Coast will quickly discover the beauty of its mountain ranges, coastal lands, vast deserts and expansive valleys. The...
Were Stagecoach Holdups Common?
Were stagecoach holdups common? Michael C. Westlund Clarkdale, Arizona Stagecoach robberies were frequent occurrences, especially during the...
Trials Following the Gunfight near the OK Corral
The movies about Tombstone’s Gunfight Behind the OK Corral often end with the “street fight,” and most folks believe the feud, like the film, was...
The Heyday of Train Robberies
The 1890s saw an epidemic of train robberies with 261 in that decade alone. Eighty-eight people were killed and eighty-six wounded. According...
Norman Rockwell’s Duke
In 1973, John Wayne sat inside Norman Rockwell’s studio in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, so the artist could paint a portrait of the actor. The...
That’s Mr. Librarian to You!
Granville Stuart is known as “The Father of Montana.” And during his years there, he was a miner, built (and lost) a huge cattle operation, led...
A Fitting End for a Killer
Ed O’Kelley is known as the man who killed Robert Ford, who killed Jesse James in 1882. O’Kelley did nine years in the Colorado pen for that. But he...
True West’s Ultimate Historic Travel Guide: Eat, Drink and Sleep Where History Happened
On May 10, 1869, the greatest commercial and transportation innovation of America’s first century was completed—the transcontinental railroad. That...
Rough Drafts
The last quarter of every publishing year brings a plethora of new Western history books into my mailbox. Here are some great books that I know True...
Battle-Tested in the Rockies
In 1925, Kathryn Downing-Smith, the wife of one of Patrick Gass’s grandsons, wrote a letter to her niece Pearl about Gass. She offered keen insight...
Raised from the Dead
Looting, wildfires, pollution, vandalism, time, the elements—Western ghost towns have lots of enemies. Thankfully, they’ve also got friends like...