The Davy Crockett of American mythology was, as anyone who grew up in the 1950s watching Walt Disney’s TV show could tell you, born on a mountaintop...
The Man Behind the Myth
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Articles
The Cowboy from Quebec
“In all the top 10 lists of great cowboy actors, he’s never there, and it drives me crazy,” says Peter Ford of his father, Glenn. The fact is, he’s...
The Faithful Dog
During its July 1872 term, the Missouri Supreme Court announced what appeared to be an innocuous opinion concerning $100. The opinion started: “Suit...
Happy 225th Birthday, Davy Crockett!
“Born on a mountaintop in Tennessee....” Mountaintop? You won’t find a mountaintop here. For decades I’ve been singing that song, and now I find out...
Ghost Towns of Route 66
Iconic Route 66 is more than a mere highway that connects a metropolis on the shore of Lake Michigan with a metropolis on the Pacific Coast. It is...
Was Geronimo a Terrorist?
Geronimo. It is a warrior name for the ages—standing comfortably alongside the likes of Achilles, Leonidas, Genghis Khan, Patton and Rommel in its...
From Deadwood to Hollywood
Sopranos creator David Chase is working with HBO on a new miniseries, Ribbon of Dreams, about the early days of Hollywood. The two principal...
Colt’s Last Wild West Six-Gun
The Old West may have been gone by the early 1900s, but the West was still a place where a man needed to be “well heeled.” It was the era of the...
Nocturnes Hit Million-Dollar Marks
The moonlit views the artist saw from his skiff as he paddled near his retreat, Inglenook Island, inspired Frederic Remington’s first nighttime...
Love Will Find a Way
July 25, 1853 Saddling up at 2 a.m. Harry Love and his fellow California Rangers ride out of their rugged mountain camp and make their way to...
1972’s Ulzana’s Raid
Ulzana’s Raid is one of the rare movies that has a particularly strong theme—violence: what does it mean, and how is it used? To perfectly...
The Civil War
Michael Shaara’s novel The Killer Angels inspired Ken Burns to make his documentary, The Civil War. When Burns’s series first aired on PBS for five...