It was a hot August night back in 1900 when 600 Phoenix residents—one of every five citizens in this dusty spot in the Arizona Territory—gathered in...
Landowners Bet the Farm
read more
Jana Bommersbach
Vera and the Sultan
Vera McGinnis was well aware one of the world’s richest and most exotic men was in the audience that September night in 1926 when she put on her...
Christina Hillius
Who would ever think a Russian peasant emigrant of the late 1800s would one day become a beacon for literacy in America? But that is the story of...
One Continental Union
It’s Monday, May 10, 1869, 2:40 p.m., Eastern time. For the first time, the entire nation is riveted to one event. “We have got done praying, the...
Hitching Your Wagon to a Star
America turned to its own “camel of the prairie” to expand west—not a humped animal that could withstand the desert, as we normally think of camels,...
Sarah Winnemucca
“I was a very small child when the first white people came into our country. They came like a lion, yes, like a roaring lion, and have continued so...
Esther Morris
The real “mother of women suffrage” is not a name you’ll find in most history books, not a name that comes immediately to mind as does Susan B....
The Truth about Hidalgo
Hidalgo- In case there’s any question that history and the Old West are again “hot” in Hollywood, Disney’s Touchstone Pictures is releasing an $80...
Vera’s Life in the Circus was a Zoo
The first time Vera McGinnis entered the Big Top at Madison Square Garden in New York City, she looked like a giant Dresden Doll. She was atop a...
Dodging Fakes
"You’ve seen more Old West autograph forgeries in the last three years than in the previous 20 years combined.” It’s a pretty stunning statement,...
Eating His Weight in Democrats
It was one of the most outrageous quotes of the Old West about one of the most barbaric crimes. In 1883, a 34-year-old tracker named Alferd Packer...
Breaking Out More Shovels
If anyone knows Billy the Kid, it’s the sheriff in the town that claims to hold the outlaw’s grave. Sheriff Gary Graves has ridden the “last ride of...