Melody Groves writes about where she lives and what she loves—the West. She is the author of Hoist A Cold One: Historic Bars of the Southwest and,...
Award-winning Author Reflects on Saloon History
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Articles
Shootout at the Middleton Ranch
Mart “Old Man” Blevins and his family arrived in the Pleasant Valley area from Texas around 1886. He and his sons, John, Charlie, Hamp and Sam...
The Real Ned Christie
A victim of the fake news of his time, “outlaw” Ned Christie now has a biographer who separates the known facts of his life from the embellishments...
Miss Yakama Nation’s Yakama War
Emily Washines believes Yakama War history offers more than “us vs. them.” This former Miss Yakama Nation knows the American Indian perspective of...
A Good Time to get Sick
To many, Granville Stuart is the Father of Montana, a giant of a man who shaped the territory and state over half a century. But he almost didn’t...
Opening Shots in Arizona’s Pleasant Valley War
The Pleasant Valley War had its beginnings around 1880 when a man named Jim Stinson moved a large herd of cattle into Pleasant Valley. The remote...
The Stage Holdup that Led to a Gunfight
September 1881. Two masked gunmen held up the Sandy Bob stage headed from Tombstone to Bisbee. Cow-boys Pete Spence (in photo) and Frank Stilwell...
Big Horn Getaway: Buffalo, Wyoming
Few towns are more thoroughly Western than Buffalo, Wyoming, and isn’t the name perfect? It conjures images of the great beasts roaming the plains,...
Along with Tom Mix, who helped carry Wyatt Earp’s Casket?
Along with Tom Mix, who helped carry Wyatt Earp’s casket? Ken Blyth Surrey, England At Wyatt Earp’s funeral, held the Tuesday after he died on...
Where Cowboy Hats Rule!
“Howdy, Tex!” True West’s Bob Boze Bell has traveled the world wearing his signature cowboy hat. From France to Thailand, Bob has sported his...
Flying Light
Historians of the American West have written dozens of books on trailblazers and overland trails in the past six decades, but Jim DeFelice’s West...
The Power of a Book
Author Helen Hunt Jackson wanted the public to better understand the plight of Native Americans—much as Harriet Beecher Stowe had done for black...