The Missouri River northwest of Bismarck, North Dakota, is not the same river explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark saw in 1805, even though...
Trailing Lewis and Clark
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Candy Moulton
It Happened in the West
A Tennessean by birth, James A. Crutchfield (Jim to his friends) says he became a Westerner by choice, and when he has the choice, his preferred...
Lost to History
A few years before the Civil War, one of the most violent episodes in Western American trail history played out on a mountain meadow in Southern...
Boone’s Lick
Larry McMurtry’s novel, Boone’s Lick, is under negotiation to be directed by Lasse Hallstrom. The Universal Studios film will be adapted by McMurtry...
Skeletons of the Sahara
American sailors shipwrecked off the North African Coast in 1815 are sold into slavery in DreamWorks and Intermedia’s Skeletons of the Sahara, based...
Following the Arkansas River
I’m driving around Wichita, Kansas, looking for the Arkansas River and I can’t find it. That is probably because I’m pronouncing it like the state...
Right Brain Overload
Cotton Smith is a right-brain guy. He paints. He draws. He develops creative ad and marketing campaigns. He has written poetry, plays, short...
Pike’s Peak or Bust!
On the first day of summer in 1850, John Beck, a Cherokee preacher en route to California’s goldfields, stopped to do a little panning along the...
On the Trail of Wild Bill Hickok
May 27, 1837: A son, James Butler, the fifth child was born to William Alonzo and Polly Butler Hickok of Homer (later Troy Grove), Illinois. 1856:...
On the Trail of Wild Bill Hickok
May 27, 1837: A son, James Butler, the fifth child was born to William Alonzo and Polly Butler Hickok of Homer (later Troy Grove), Illinois. 1856:...
Forging a Road to Zion
In 1847, Brigham Young, president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, organized a pioneer party and struck out west from the...
Celebrating Pioneer Women
Ida May and Edith Eudora Ammon homesteaded in North Dakota in the 1880s, expecting their venture to be a lark. They intended proving up, getting...