Everyone’s familiar with Abbott-Donning Concord Stagecoach from the western movies but in reality the Celerity and Mud wagons were the stagecoach of...
Celerity and Mud Wagons
read more
Articles
New Mexico’s Best Kept Secret
Artesia just might be New Mexico’s best kept secret. Located at the intersection of U.S. Highways 82 and 285, the downtown Arts & Cultural...
Border Crossers
In the old days (early twentieth century) riders were often hard pressed to know exactly where the Mexican border was and often cowboys wandered...
Millard Fillmore Leech
Millard Fillmore Leech had his moment of fame in September 1877. A clerk at a mercantile in Ogallala, Nebraska, when he sold some red bandanas to a...
Chicken as Tender as a Maiden’s Heart
If you asked miners what they ate as they dug for the silver and gold and copper of Arizona Territory, they'd shrug and say: “The usual 3-B's:...
Shavetail
Shavetail The 17th century term “Lingo” was rooted in lingua, Latin for “tongue.” One of its definitions—“the vocabulary of a special subject or...
DVD Review: THE MARK OF ZORRO
DVD Review: THE MARK OF ZORRO (Kino Lorber; $29.95) In this Blu-ray release of the 1940 classic, Tyrone Power stars as Diego, outwardly the effete...
Who Really “Tamed” The West?
History has lots of candidates, from trappers to explorers to miners, military men, ranchers, homesteaders, even gunslingers. But you seldom hear...
Rockwell Paints for Stagecoach
In 1966, legendary American artist Norman Rockwell was hired for a special job—painting a series of portraits for a remake of the classic Western...
Welcome to Mule Nation
My father, Allen P. Bell, was a stubborn Norwegian. And if you believe my wife, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. But still, even with that...
Rocky Mountain High
Drinking in the spectacular views from Lookout Mountain in Golden, Colorado, one can see why the former scout-turned-showman Buffalo Bill Cody...
The Luckiest Woman in America
THE LUCKIEST WOMAN IN AMERICA: That title has to go to a woman born a slave in a Mississippi plantation on August 15, 1818, and freed “forever” by a...