One of the smartest strategic moves by the Frontier Army during the Indian Wars was to enlist Natives as scouts. On the Plains, tribes like the...
The Apache Scouts
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Articles
Did American Indians have some version of bathrooms or latrines?
Did American Indians have some version of bathrooms or latrines? James White Goliad, Texas American Indians generally did their “business” in the...
Virgil’s Arm Flapping in the Breeze
On the night of December 28, 1881, City Marshal Virgil Earp was ambushed and hit with buckshot crossing the intersection of Fifth and Allen Streets...
What History Has Taught Me
The father of six kids, Don Collier is well known as a Westerns actor. He broke into the genre in 1948, graduating from an extra in Massacre River...
Rowdy Joe vs. William Red Beard
Old West gunfights occasionally inflicted collateral damage. That was the case in October 1873 when rival saloon owners “Rowdy Joe” Lowe (pictured)...
Honeymoon Trail
There were many trails that crossed Arizona in the early days including the Butterfield Overland Stage, the Gila Trail and the Beale Camel Road and...
The Tombstone Mystique
What’s it mean to market authenticity? That’s the question Kara McCormack, a postdoctoral teaching fellow in the Thinking Matters Program at...
Eating Out
A basic necessity in frontier camps, restaurants often started out in tents. An evolution took place as wagons rolled west and pioneers arrived to...
Steaming into the Future
Few innovations changed the face of Arizona more than the arrival of the first steam engine in Tucson in March of 1880. Travel time for passengers...
The Tale That Won’t Die
It’s been called the West’s bloodiest gunfight. Hugh Anderson and Arthur McCluskie met in the middle of the main street in Medicine Lodge, Indian...
Arizona Rough Riders
In 1898, Arizona became the first in the nation to sign up for a “cowboy cavalry” for the Spanish-American War. Prescott, which had about 2,000...
Pete Spence
Elliott Larkin Ferguson is best known to history as Pete Spence, one of the Cowboys of Tombstone. Probably his biggest claim to fame—his connection...