Don Diego de Vargas wrote in the late 1600s that New Mexico was “remote beyond compare,” and its cultural history had been as complex as its...
New Mexico Past and Future
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Articles
Devil’s Gate
The Sweetwater River Valley in central Wyoming is the setting for this narrative history of a desolate region of the country that remains relatively...
Tom Horn Hits the Auction Block
The former Pinkerton detective and hired gunman hanged for the murder of a rancher’s 14-year-old son, Willie Nickell—a crime he confessed to in...
Preservation: Depot Heroes
Depot Heroes Pioneers participating in the Cherokee Land Run in 1893 settled along four town sites in the Oklahoma Territory: two Pond Creeks and...
Whiskey-Runnin’ Whoop-Up Trail
The landscape along the Whoop-Up Trail was “rolling prairie, cut up occasionally by collies [coulees]—covered with short, dried up grass and prickly...
Have Gun, Safe for Travel?
In this post 9•11 world, where it is getting harder to travel with firearms or wear one as part of an Old West outfit, help is on the way! John...
Gunsmoke: The Director’s Collection
Serious Gunsmoke fans have been grousing about the curious way the show has been made available on DVD. Diehards think that the series, all 20 years...
Legendary Outlaws
Howard Hawks once said in an interview that he often visited fellow director John Ford as Ford neared the end of his life. He told the writer that...
Rock Hudson Screen Legend Collection
The Last Sunset (1961), a typically curious Robert Aldrich film, features the talents of the blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo and Kirk Douglas. It’s...
Railroad’s First Lady
If any man in 1901 had been asked about women in business, he’d have laughed and said they didn’t have any “business sense.” Besides, women were too...
Getting Away With Murder on the Texas Frontier
Justice as meted out on the frontier still has a strange appeal at times, and Bill Neal has given us a big dose of it. A litany of old Texas murder...
The Landscape of Hollywood Westerns
This collection of 12 essays examines films from an ecocritical point of view. Ecocriticism generally means exploring the role of nature in a given...