Since 1988, when award-winning author Richard White published his first volume of history, The Roots of Dependency: Subsistence, Environment, and...
The End of the West
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Articles
The Unpopular Governor of Texas
Edmund J. Davis was a Reconstruction governor of Texas—and not a popular one. He was a former Union officer who joined the Republican Party after...
A Frontier Favorite Lever Gun
All 1873 Winchester rifles have octagonal barrels and the carbines have round barrels, right? Well, no, as a special option about one out of every...
John Ford and Harry Goulding
The year was 1938 and the Navajo were in the deep depths of the Great Depression. Harry Goulding, proprietor of Goulding’s trading post on the...
Bring ‘Em Back Alive?
Jack Helm is probably best known for being a victim of Texas’ Sutton-Taylor Feud (John Wesley Hardin was one of the gunmen involved in his death—see...
The Redoubtable Toothbrush
The question about hygiene in the West came up the other day from someone wondering if cowboys brushed their teeth. Well, some did and some didn’t....
Custer’s Gold
“GOLD!” proclaimed Dakota Territory’s Bismarck Tribune, August 12, 1874. Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer’s Black Hills expedition had discovered...
The Bird Cage Theater
Tombstone’s fabulous Bird Cage Theater opened December 23rd, 1881 to a raucous crowd territorial Arizonans. There’s no doubt in the realm of legend...
A Shootout Between Friends
Billy Collins was the younger brother of Sam Bass associate Joel Collins—but he didn’t learn from his sibling’s death at the hands of lawmen in...
Who has Jim Bowie’s Knife from the 1836 Battle of the Alamo?
Who has Jim Bowie’s knife from the 1836 Battle of the Alamo? Ben Moskowitz South Amboy, New Jersey Nobody knows. Like most, if not all, of the...
Monkey Business
A half-scale saddle that advertised Buffalo Bill’s Wild West act of a monkey riding a goat was among the top historical lots to hammer down past its...
Mysterious Dave and the Preacher
One day a young man calling himself Brother Johnson came to town and soon his youth and enthusiasm was attracting large crowds. He dazzled them with...