Jedediah Smith made the first reported crossing of California’s unpredictable and treacherous Sierra Nevada Mountains. Deep snows had forced him and...

I was in Taos, New Mexico, in May 2010 lecturing on Davy Crockett when executive producer Denis Stewart tracked me down. Stewart, an old pro who had...

You wouldn’t know it today when you drive across Colorado and Wyoming, seeing cattle grazing with sheep herds nearby, that a century ago such...

Considering all the guardian angels who have looked over the Galveston Railroad Museum for more than a quarter century, where were they in the early...

The Westerns often had it wrong. They made gunfights so neat and clean, even with all the blood and bullet holes. Most cinematic gunfights went like...

August 7, 1871 Charles Couger is sitting on a bed reading a newspaper in the American House in Abilene, Kansas. Four shots are fired from outside...

“Should any of my readers ever be impelled to visit the prairies…I can assure him that he need not think to enter at once upon the paradise of his...

Recall that powerful scene in the 1993 movie Tombstone in which Wyatt Earp (Kurt Russell)  sat by the bedside of his dying friend Doc Holliday (Val...

Readers sounded off on their favorite museums on our Facebook page-—that’s right, we may be Old West maniacs, but we’re at least social-media-savvy...

Long Ike and Sweet Betsey attended a dance. Ike wore a pair of his Pike County pants. Sweet Betsey was covered with ribbons and rings. Says Ike,...

Decades before Cowboys & Aliens moviegoers watched Billy the Kid vs. Dracula and Haunted Gold, before they saw Daniel Craig take on the...

“Just don’t do anything stupid.” That’s either the safety lesson or motivational speech driver Bert Winchester has just given three other...