Curing ailments were quite popular in the 19th century. Patent medicines promised to cure everything from male impotency to unmentionable female...
A Nazi Western?
Believe it or not, a 1936 German film, Der Kaiser von Kalifornien (The Emperor of California), was partially filmed in Sedona. The script allegedly...
Wheelbarrows Started The Fortune
The name Studebaker today means a classy automobile from the 1920s. But the name Studebaker in the 1850s meant a first-class wheelbarrow. John M....
John Wayne’s First Movie Six-gun
Although John Wayne is undeniably best known for Western films in which he packed an 1873 Colt Peacemaker and dispensed frontier justice with the...
One-Armed Bandits
California was bursting at the seams with fortune seekers in 1885, when 23-year-old Charles Fey landed in San Francisco. Gaming was made illegal in...
There Must be Something in the Water…
What is it about my Indiana home that seemed to breed Old West types—often bad guys? Try these on for size: John Ringo. Montana lawman/outlaw Buck...
Fashion Faux Pas, Arizona-Style
Embarking by boat from San Francisco in 1874, Martha Summerhayes joined her army husband as he headed to far-off Arizona. Arriving in Yuma they met...
Tragic Powwow
June 1, 1887 Absent from duty for five days, the Apache Kid, along with four other Apache scouts under his command, ride single file into the...
Sinful Chocolate
Water and crackers are all that sustained Ignace Wagner for a week when he arrived in San Francisco, California, in 1852. He borrowed some money and...
Dangerous Dan
Some have called Grant County (NM) Deputy Sheriff Dan Tucker “Dangerous Dan.” And his gun notches are estimated at somewhere in the double digits....
Was John Wesley Hardin as deadly and fast to shoot as folks claim?
Was John Wesley Hardin as deadly and fast to shoot as folks claim? Ronald Bolza Slatington, Pennsylvania Many Old West experts position John Wesley...
The First Naval Vessel on the Colorado River
In 1858, friction between the Mormons in Utah and the federal government led to a brief encounter known as the Mormon War. The United States,...