On his way from Illinois to California in 1852, William Henry Hart wrote, “The bacon too that I had always disliked even the sight of, became very...
The Bacon Cure
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Articles
Kit Carson’s Horseback Duel
August 1835 The large French-Canadian trapper Joseph Chouinard is roaring drunk and on a day-long rampage at the annual trapper’s rendezvous on the...
Butterfield’s Trail West
“Remember boys, nothing on God’s earth must stop the United States Mail,” John Butterfield admonished his employees, and from September 15, 1858 to...
Portrait of America
Shamoon Zamir’s The Gift of the Face: Portraiture and Time in Edward S. Curtis’s The North American Indian provides a spectacularly researched...
Mystery of Mists and Mountain Men
Writing a biography about John Colter, who left behind no journal, letters or other reminiscences, was the daunting task of Ronald M. Angelin and...
Guns and Outlaws
Famous outlaw and lawman firearms have always been captivating. Gerry and Janet Souter’s Guns of Outlaws: Weapons of the American Bad Man is the...
On the Edge of the West with Max McCoy
A Kansas native, the WWA Spur award-winning novelist Max McCoy was raised on the edge of the American prairie between Baxter Springs, Kansas, and...
Rough Drafts 2/15
Winter is a wonderful time to plan a trip to the West—and take along a reading list to match: Dream West If Western art inspires you, Montana’s...
Who is the man James Arness shoots every week in the introduction to Gunsmoke?
Who is the man James Arness shoots every week in the introduction to Gunsmoke? Dan Clutter Denison, Iowa Gun expert Jim Dunham wrote in the April...
Chief Iron Tail
Chief Iron Tail, born Sinté Máza, of the Oglala Lakota Nation, was a rare 19th-century Indian celebrity with an international following and a...
Goodbye Gus
Just last year, in our April 2014 edition, we saluted Gus Walker on this page. Gus passed on November 23, 2014, after a brief illness. We called...
True West’s Best Firearms for 2015
The use of brass or iron tacks to decorate gunstocks, whether for religious or strictly decorative purposes, was a practice of the American Indian...