They call him the “Last of the Silver Screen Cowboys.” They might have added he was also the only one of the famous singing cowboys who could lay...
Rex Allen
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Articles
What did Cowboys Typically Eat on a Cattle Drive?
What did cowboys typically eat on a cattle drive? Wes Shinn Saratoga Springs, New York Around 3 a.m., hours before cowhands climbed out of their...
An Electric Dream Burns Out
Splendiferous. That sums up the opulence of the 1890 G.W. Frank House in Kearney, Nebraska—the showplace of a man who promoted this piece of the...
Bigger Than the O.K. Corral
The Tascosa Gunfight of 1886 isn’t well-remembered today. It involved two factions—cowboys of the LS Ranch versus men in smaller cattle operations....
Ordeal in The Desert
On the outskirts of Casa Grande, along what used to be the main highway between Tucson and Phoenix stands a simple, concrete monument surrounded by...
The Black Man at Little Big Horn
Isaiah Dorman’s claim to fame? He was the only black man killed at the Little Big Horn battle. While not much is known about his early life, Dorman...
Sand Creek Complexity
Sand Creek, like Little Bighorn or Wounded Knee, serves as a lightning rod evoking polemic responses. Gregory F. Michno knew this well when he...
The Cup Spinning Sequence
When then-Director Kevin Jarre first spoke to Val Kilmer about the gun-twirling, cup-spinning scene in 1993’s Tombstone, the actor who played John...
Titans of the West
For fans of Western cinema, 2018 is an anniversary year of great importance as the 80th anniversary of John Ford directing his first John Wayne film...
The Fix Was In
Doc and Jim Manning killed lawman/gunfighter Dallas Stoudenmire at an El Paso saloon in 1882. The pair were charged with murder, and it looked to...
Road Trip!
The long American road trip across the West evokes emotions of freedom and adventure and mental images of windswept plains, awe-inspiring mountain...
Shine Smith
Hugh Dickson “Shine” Smith was ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1912 and assigned to a church in Coleman, Texas where he became a “cowboy...