Issac C. Parker was known as the “Hanging Judge.” He ruled the Western District of Arkansas court between 1875 and 1896, and he earned his nickname....

Scout’s Rest Ranch, known today as Buffalo Bill State Historical Park in North Platte, Nebraska, might seem like an odd place to start a road trip...

Billy Hutchinson, who opened the Bird Cage on December 23rd, 1881, proved up on the old adage, once an entertainer always an entertainer. One night...

In the old west, you didn't have an Ace hidden in your poker hand when you had an “ace in the hole.” What you had was a hidden pistol concealed in a...

Jerome Tuccille’s book titled The Roughest Riders: The Untold Story of the Black Soldiers in the Spanish American War (Chicago Review Press, $26.95)...

August 24, 1877 A wild picnic is in progress just outside the city limits of Denver, Colorado. Notorious brothel owner Mattie Silks is among the...

Fred Waite got out of the Lincoln County War alive—and managed to turn his life around. In 1878, Waite joined Billy the Kid and the Regulators.  He...

After their capture at Hanska Slough following the ill-fated Northfield, Minnesota bank robbery, Cole, Bob and Jim Younger thought they'd be hung...

That historical honor goes to U.S. Marshall Albert Lowe of Nome, Alaska in the late 1890s, who reportedly slapped an intoxicated saloon keeper and...

The Port of Jefferson’s first steamboat captain opened Texas’s second oldest, continuously operating hotel, the Excelsior. William Perry, a...

Talk about a rare photo.  Billy the Kid’s friend Charlie Bowdre carried in his pocket a photo of his wife Manuela and him.  That’s where it was on...

Jim Hoy, Emporia State University’s director of the Center for Great Plains Studies, is a native of the Kansas Flint Hills. Recently retired from...