In the early morning hours of February 3, 1897, Frank Novak’s dry goods store—in the small Iowa town of Walford—went up in flames. The townspeople...
Skull in the Ashes
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Articles
Night Riders in the Tallgrass
Mo Griffin’s Night Riders in the Tallgrass is an uncomplicated cowboy story that, once Griffin gets up to speed, becomes an enjoyable adventure....
Max Evans’s Favorite Nature Reads
Western artist and award-winning author Max Evans, best known for his novels The Rounders, Hi Lo Country, One Eyed Sky and Bluefeather Fellini, as...
On the Trail of Solomon Butcher
Solomon Butcher first saw Nebraska in 1880 when he claimed homestead land in northeast Custer County. He had been working in Ohio as a traveling...
Queen of the Cowtowns
Few places inspired newspaper editors to wax wroth as Dodge City, once described as a “perfect paradise for gamblers, cut-throats, and girls.” The...
September 2013 Events
Western roundup of events where you can experience the Old West. ANIMAL ADOPTIONS Wild Horse and Burro Adoptions Bend, OR, September 14: Wild horses...
Rough Drafts 8/13
Searching for the West, real and imagined, is a theme of our authors and contributors this month. One of the best ways to experience the West is...
Asher’s Legacy
Thrust into a war within America’s Civil War, seven-year-old Ambrose Asher carried with him a Cheyenne treasure. The oldest-known ledger book of...
On the Trail of Warring Parties
A few years ago, I was having dinner with a Freedom’s Frontier National Heritage Area representative, talking about—what else?—the Civil War in...
Blazing Bastards
December 8, 1883 On a cold December night, five cowboys wearing heavy coats and masks ride up the gulch, past the Copper Queen smelter, and dismount...
The Tombstone Legacy
On Wyatt Earp’s arrival in Tombstone in the 1993 movie Tombstone, the preening and corrupt Cochise County Sheriff Johnny Behan bragged about the...
Hop Aboard! 18 Historic Train Excursions
The mystique of the Western railroads have been a part of my life since childhood—from my father’s boyhood tales of traveling the Super Chief to the...