Tombstone, Arizona, survived. Scabtown, Texas, didn’t. Then, there are the other burgs, those that boomed, died and yet, in a way, still live. We...
Warped Planks and Rattlesnakes
read more
Johnny D. Boggs
Following the Nez Perce Trail
The words are as moving today as they were when Chief Joseph spoke them on a cold fall day in 1877: “I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are all...
Puttin’ the Hirt on Your Head
Tom Hirt is one of the most respected makers of cowboy hats today—with good reason. You won’t find any cookie-cutter-type headware at his...
Puttin’ the Hirt on Your Head
Tom Hirt is one of the most respected makers of cowboy hats today—with good reason. You won’t find any cookie-cutter-type headware at his...
Bombs Over Texas
“Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it,” Mark Twain once said. Obviously, Samuel Langhorne Clemens never met...
Gettin’ Along on the Texas/Chisholm Trail
Jesse Chisholm was no cattleman, and the trail he blazed didn’t enter Texas but stretched from the Red River in present-day Oklahoma to Wichita,...
Keepin’ Them Dogies Rollin’ . . .
The good news is that the ramrod of this cattle drive is Roxanne Knight—not Tom Dunson. Even better news is that I don’t see Asa Watts anywhere. The...
Ancient Pueblo Culture Comes Alive
A tourist at Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado isn’t impressed. Isn’t impressed by the torched scenery. Isn’t impressed by the history. “I was...
Paying Tribute to the Man in Black
This article was supposed to be all about singer/songwriter Rodney Crowell—from his arrival in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1972 to his new CD, Fate’s...
A River Runs Through History
What was Juan de Oñate thinking when he named the Rio Grande in 1598? Great River? Criminy, at some places it’s not even a mediocre ditch. Explorers...
Judgment at Jacksboro
Throngs of people descended upon Jacksboro, Texas, on a hot summer day in 1871 to witness a murder trial. Murders were commonplace in reconstruction...
Where’s the Beef?
The cowboys, longhorns and chuck wagon on the bluff two miles south of Caldwell, Kansas, aren’t making any progress. Since 1995, this trail herd has...