North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Washington mark their quasquicentennials—125 years since achieving statehood—this year and it is a good time...
The Northern Plains to the Pacific Northwest
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Candy Moulton
Robert J. Conley
December 29, 1940 – February 16, 2014 A great voice in Western Literature and advocate for storytelling by American Indian writers was stilled with...
Westward Across the Divide
Will Bagley, today’s most knowledgeable historian of the overland trails experience, has focused his narrative expertise on the most important point...
Nez Perce in Yellowstone
Emma Cowan awoke early the morning of August 24, 1877, to the sound of strange voices coming from outside the tent she shared with husband George on...
Bozeman Trail
Fort Laramie is one of the great frontier posts in the West, now restored as a national historic site with a complete complement of structures: Army...
On the High Plains Trail of Hall of Fame Western Writers
Vanette Johnston was moved to tears when Western Writers of America (WWA) inducted her late husband Terry C. Johnston into the Western Writers Hall...
The Frontier Christmas Trail
Chestnuts roasting on an open fire. Well, actually they were roasting on a gas barbecue grill, but those warm chestnuts made good hand warmers in...
On the Trail of Ancient Artists
The tourists from Canada said they could not “read” the petroglyphs carved onto the rock walls at Valley of Fire in Nevada. “They don’t appear to be...
On the Trail of Solomon Butcher
Solomon Butcher first saw Nebraska in 1880 when he claimed homestead land in northeast Custer County. He had been working in Ohio as a traveling...
The Bloody Bozeman
Trails across the West in the mid-1800s crisscrossed Indian lands, often displacing the people who had been living on the land for generations. The...
Seeking Ute Stories
I sat in the front row of a school auditorium watching girls compete in a princess contest. This was not a competition of fancy hair and youngsters...
Give Me a Homestead
When my grand-mother arrived in Wyoming in March 1903 and moved into the two-room cabin her first husband had built, she must have believed her life...