One might say Asa Mercer was a "marriage arranger." In 1861 he became a founding father and first president of the University of Washington. He was...
Courtship and Marriage in the Territories
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Articles
Building Your Western Library With Leo W. Banks
As a youngster, Leo W. Banks watched too many TV and movie Westerns. The summer before entering Boston College High School, the Jesuits sent out a...
Pioneer Women in the West
Back in the 1960s I used to perform the old folk song, “Waggoner’s Lad.” The first line went like this: “Hard luck is the fortune of all womankind....
Drop ‘Em! Belts or No Belts?
In the movie Open Range, Boss (Robert Duval) and Charlie (Kevin Costner) rough up some bad guys. And just to humiliate them, Boss orders them to...
Where The West is Still Wild…
See Cave Creek (hometown and World Headquarters of True West magazine) in all its frontier town glory at this year’s Wild West Days on Nov 3-5. ...
6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon: Wyatt Earp Edition
People used to play a game called “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.” The rules: you had to be able to find unusual connections to the actor in six or...
The Real Frank James
Nobody asks, “Who is Jesse James?” Books, movies, newspapers, dime novels have all shared his story, from the days when the bank and train robbing...
Do we Know who Killed Bob Dalton?
Do we know who killed Bob Dalton? Paul Randall — Tucson, Arizona. The shooter who fired the shot that killed Bob Dalton on October 5, 1892— from a...
Black Bart’s Epicurean Escapades
Notorious for his 1880s stage-coach robberies, what did gentleman bandit and poet Black Bart eat and where? Everyone thought San Francisco resident...
John Selman Pt. III
About the same time John Selman shot and killed Bass Outlaw John Wesley Hardin rode into El Paso and hung up his shingle as a lawyer. The...
John Selman Pt. II
In El Paso Selman spent most of his time in the city’s gambling dens and an occasional job as a constable. In August, 1893 the 54-year-old Selman...
John Selman Pt. I
The question came up the other day, was John Selman a lawman, bad guy or a back-shooter? The answer is: All of the above. John Henry Selman,...