James Bliss was a loser. Time and time again, he tried and failed to be a noted Old West badman. A gunfighter, rustler, robber, and whatever else he...
A Wannabe Badman
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Articles
Powhatan Clarke
The brash, young lieutenant won a Medal of Honor in 1886 when he rescued one of his wounded troopers during a fight in the Pinito Mountains of...
Lost in the Wilderness
In 1870, descriptions of the natural wonders from the Yellowstone area were often seen as fantasy. Truman C. Everts, age 54, joined the Washburn...
Marshal Harvey Whitehill
Silver City, New Mexico Marshal, Harvey Whitehill was working to solve a train robbery at Gage Station. The November 1883 heist had netted less than...
Del Potter’s Railroad
Del Potter ran a little railroad he proudly named the Clifton and Northern. The line ran from the little town of Clifton to a mine north of town but...
Crossroads of the West
Fort Kearny, the first U.S. Army post on the Oregon Trail, was a busy place after its founding in 1848. During one 18-month period following the...
Marion Hedgepath, the Debonair Bandit
Someone asked me the other day why Marion Hedgepath isn’t a better-known outlaw. I have at least a dozen outlaw encyclopedias and he isn’t listed in...
Fred Harvey Days
It’s easy to forget that much of today’s popular image of the Southwest is testimony to the marketing and advertising genius of the Fred Harvey...
Ghosts Going Gangbusters?
Am I the only one who has noticed, or does every hotel in Arizona have a resident ghost? The Weatherford Hotel in Flagstaff is allegedly haunted by...
John Hance, Grand Canyon’s Windjammer
In the old days they used to say that anyone who visited the Grand Canyon and didn’t meet the great windjammer, Captain John Hance, had missed an...
The Slopers
In 1880s Tombstone, the Police Gazette reported a rivalry between gamblers: West Coast card sharps, called “Slopers,” competed with gamblers east of...
My family connections include John Wesley Hardin and Clay Allison, both of whom had Tennessee ancestors. Did the outlaws ever meet?
Don Magers Saltillo, Tennessee “Wes Hardin never went to Tennessee,” says author Dennis McCown. “Clay Allison’s ‘outlaw years’ and death all...