In the opening months of the Mexican War Sam Colt's 1836 Patterson revolver in the hands of the Texas Mounted Rangers proved itself worthy in...

Miners are notorious for a lifestyle of hard work, at times peppered with harder play. Alfred T. Jackson was a Nutmegger (someone from Connecticut)...

In 1897, Frank Canton—former Texas outlaw and lawman in various locales—was appointed a deputy US marshal in Alaska. He later wrote that he had to...

  William “Doc” Rowan was a ham in the vein of P.T. Barnum, the circus king of the Gilded Age. For more than 20 years, Doc Rowan shone above...

One of the tallest men in Arizona territory in the 1880s was Pima County Sheriff Bob Paul. The former stagecoach shotgun messenger had been on the...

United States Army Paymaster Maj. Joseph Washington Wham (rhymes with bomb) is riding in a dougherty (canopied ambulance) on his way to pay “all...

Fires were always a menace to frontier towns. The boomtowns of Prescott, Bisbee, Jerome, and Tombstone all burned to the ground at least once during...

Approximately 250,000 abandoned mines exist in the state of Arizona, testifying to the scope and impact of mining on the state. Naturally, at the...

How accurate was 1999’s You Know My Name, about Bill Tilghman? James Patrick Gaines Orangevale, California Like most Western movies—not that close...