In a letter, written in December 1928, the 80-year-old frontiersman Wyatt Earp opined that perhaps “my health will be back to normal when this story...
Taste of the West
True West magazine’s “Frontier Fare” columnist and Western Writers of America President Sherry Monahan has recently published The Cowboy’s Cookbook:...
Big Brims
When Sam Peckinpah invited his close friend Jim Silke, an illustrator, to Western Costume in Los Angeles, California, in 1973 to look at wardrobe...
Wells Fargo Messenger Turned Celebrity
David Trousdale was a nondescript Wells Fargo express messenger on a Southern Pacific train. March 14, 1912, made him a celebrity. That’s when...
Climax Jim Chews on the Evidence
Rufus Nephew, better-known as Climax Jim, was the darling of the Arizona press during the late 1890s. Thanks to the fertile imaginations of the old...
The Legendary Crook’s Trail
In March 1875, Brig. Gen. George Crook—on his way out of Arizona to take over as commander of the Department of the Platte—enjoyed a “farewell hop.”...
Mary Doria Russell
I wanted to write about Doc Holliday because I am drawn to the unfairly maligned. John Henry Holliday deserves more respect and compassion than he’s...
The Wild Kingdom on the Santa Fe Trail
As Far As the Eye Could Reach: Accounts of Animals Along the Santa Fe Trail, 1821-1880, by Phyllis S. Morgan is a wonderful essay collection that...
Who Was J. Frank Dalton?
J. Frank Dalton wanted publicity—so much that he claimed to be famous Old West figures. In the 1940s, he said he was lawman Frank Dalton, who had...
The Standoff
Mike O’Rourke, 18, also known as Johnny-Behind-the-Deuce, and his roommate Robert Petty, 23, are eating in Smith’s restaurant in Charleston,...
Silent Death
Silent, deadly and accurate at close range, the American Indian’s handmade bow was capable of rapid fire. Because the archer’s bow threw a...
Moonlighting Lawmen
Henry Brown rode with Billy the Kid in the Lincoln County War, then after cowboying in the panhandle of Oklahoma he became a respected city marshal...