In True West’s annual “Best of the West” January 2014 issue, I highlighted the best authors and books of 2013. A new category I’d like to introduce...
Gunsmoke’s Gun for Hire
The U.S. Army’s sidearm of choice from 1873 to 1892, the Colt.45 single action Army revolver, found new fans when Marshal Matt Dillon, played by...
Nez Perce in Yellowstone
Emma Cowan awoke early the morning of August 24, 1877, to the sound of strange voices coming from outside the tent she shared with husband George on...
Davy Crockett’s “Ol’ Betsy” Found
In most everyone’s life comes a moment or event that provides the catalyst to their future. In my case, that event was the 1954 TV airing of...
Battle of the Plaza
April 16, 1881 Traveling mostly by rail, Bat Masterson has just covered 1,100 miles to come to the aid of his estranged brother Jim. Bat was just in...
A Saga of Bloody Kansas
Melody Groves continues her award-winning Colton Brothers Saga in Kansas Bleed, putting the brothers in the middle of Bloody Kansas. When fiery...
On the Trail of History
In the last decade, with the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery exploration of the West in 2004-2006, and the current...
CSI: Fort Union
How do you solve a murder case that’s 150 years cold? It’s not easy, not when you can’t examine the victims’ bodies, and all you have to go on is a...
Profile in Leadership
In the introduction to Edmund G. Ross: Soldier-Senator-Abolitionist, author Richard A. Ruddy commented: his interest in this subject “began in part...
Race, Rodeo and the West
Rick Steber needs little introduction to many readers of True West. The author of more than 30 books, Steber has long been fascinated with...
Rediscovering the Mandan’s Heart of the World
For decades, the Mandan people of the northern plains, whose vast and well-organized communities greeted French trappers and Lewis and Clark, were...
Thomas Brent Smith
What most folks don’t know about Maynard Dixon is he spent most of his life and career in the metropolitan art center of San Francisco. I fell in...