Long before anyone ever mentioned Monica Lewinsky’s blue frock, everyone was talking about Laura Keene’s dress stained with President Abraham...

One of the most surefire, but unglamorous, ways to get rich in 1880s Arizona was to sell all the boomers merchandise. Tombstone merchants sold...

That's one of the names they called Sarah Bowman. “The Great Western” was another moniker—borrowing the name of the world's largest steamship. Both...

Why did the great artist Charlie Russell wear a red sash? Brian LaMoure Helena, Montana Cowboy artist Charlie Russell never wore a belt, but he...

The Old West’s Indian Wars were brutal affairs, with innocent victims on all sides. Depredations were all too frequent. One was the Camp Grant...

The rocky wilderness of the American West turned out to be the richest treasure trove of natural resources in the history of the civilized world....

Mattie Silks. Hollywood couldn't have done better if it wanted to name one of the most famous and successful “love merchants” of the Old West. Her...

Happy Jack Morco had the wrong nickname.  He boasted of killing up to a dozen men—there’s no confirmation of that.  He certainly was a boozer and...

To the Arizona cowboy, language has always meant imaginative mangling. Something isn’t just loud, it’s noisy as a fog horn in a funeral parlor. A...

Molly Ott didn’t realize she was a modern-day “homesteader” who would repeat a 150-year-old legacy when she moved her family from Phoenix, Arizona,...

Hard rock mining was hard, dangerous work where death was a constant companion. Before caged elevators came into use miners were lowered hundreds of...

Col. John Baylor learned that fame and power are fleeting. In 1861, he led Confederate troops to victory at the First Battle of Mesilla (New...