Few people realize it but the world’s first aerial combat took place near the Arizona-Mexican border. During frequent revolutions in Mexico during...
The Bombing of Naco
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Articles
Do Westerns Accurately Show how Horses are Saddle Broken?
Do Westerns accurately show how horses are saddle broken? -Carl Justice Bluefield, West Virginia I heard an old cowboy say, “The trick to breaking a...
Bad Medicine
In the spring of 1874, medicine man Isa-tai (translates as “Wolf’s Vulva”) convinced 250 Kiowas, Commanches and Southern Cheyenne that White Man...
The Coward of Little Big Horn
Marcus Reno’s historical reputation is: coward. He was a man who ran at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, leaving Lt. Col. George Custer and the...
Bill Hickman
Bill Hickman was an early follower of and bodyguard for Mormon founder Joseph Smith in 1839. After the move to Utah, Hickman became a sheriff,...
War and Peace in the West
Peter Cozzens’s The Earth is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West (Alfred A. Knopf, $35) is the most comprehensive,...
The Coolest Guy in the Room
Paul Cool was just that: cool. The coolest. And that went beyond the Old West field. Oh, he was the coolest there, for sure. Cool was an...
Preserving Polygamy
Preserving Polygamy became a women's campaign in the late 1800s—a point that will surprise many, who assumed women hated the plural-wife dictate of...
Entertainment and the Arts
Back in the days before radio, movies and television, lectures were a popular form of entertainment in Arizona communities. They ranged from...
The Unbroken Peace Treaty
The young warriors of the Penateka Comanche tribe, several hundreds of them, lined up on one side of their camping ground along the San Saba River...
Their Name Lives On
It started with one Pima basket, bought in the late 1890s somewhere around Phoenix, Arizona. Newcomers to the Southwest—health seekers—found the...
Augusta Tabor
Augusta Tabor’s life with husband Horace wasn’t easy. They struggled from the 1850s through early 1880s, trying to make their fortune. Augusta was...