What a helluva year 2020 was! While the past 12 months will be remembered in largely negative terms, there have been a handful of firearms...
The Best of the West: Firearms
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Articles
The Best of the West: True Westerner of the Year
Do you remember the first time you read Paul Andrew Hutton? He immediately captured my interest and imagination with his double-barreled literary...
The Best of the West: Western Wear
One hundred years ago, on June 20, 1921, boot maker Charles H. Hyer died in Olathe, Kansas. Mr. Hyer and his family had moved to the Eastern Kansas...
January 2021 Western Roundup
HERITAGE FESTIVALS Montana Winter Fair Lewistown, MT, January 29-31: The Montana Winter Fair celebrates 76 years of promoting Montana...
California Joe: Great Scout and Plainsman
“Who was California Joe?” asked J.W. Buel in his Heroes of the Plains published in 1882, for Joe’s origin was as much a mystery to his...
Trapped! 31 Mexican Vaqueros VS Geronimo
Patricio Valenzuela, the hacendado (ranch owner) of the Agua Fria hacienda, eight miles east of Cucurpe in Sonora, Mexico, is alerted by his...
Red, White, and Black: The US Army in the West 1866-1891
After four years of fighting, the Civil War ended. The victorious Union Army soon disbanded, leaving behind a small force of regulars to such...
Frontier Hygiene and Pancho Villa’s Missing Head
What was frontier life like in the 1880s? Rena Miller Titusville, Florida What you see in Westerns is a sanitized version of life in the 19th...
On the History Trail with the Old Bison: A Memoir
I first met Robert M. Utley in May 1977. He came to Bloomington to receive a Distinguished Alumni Service Award from Indiana University. I...
Sitting Bull: The Sioux Leader’s Final Flight For Freedom
The Sioux Leader’s Final Flight to Freedom Sunday, June 25, 1876, was a clear, hot, sunny day in the valley of Montana’s Greasy Grass River, which...
A Tall Tale of Two Bills
Did lawman Bill Tilghman really arrest outlaw Bill Doolin?
Shooting Back
Our readers remind us of the variables and vagaries of HISTORICAL truths, “well-established” facts, headlines and historical photographs.