Back in the 1920s, renowned Western artist Charles M. Russell, who knew a thing or two about cowboys and how cowboying got started, noted, “Texas...
Buckaroo Country
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Johnny D. Boggs
Cattle, Cowboys and Culture
If you’re a vegetarian, stop reading. Unless you like opera. We don’t think of cattle towns as cultural meccas, but many of them were. And still...
Blood on the Earth
Two months separated the 1868 clashes between the U.S. military and the Indians at Beecher Island and the Washita River. One is known for heroism on...
Hancock’s War
Second Lieutenant Lyman S. Kidder, 7th Cavalry, was unlucky. I knew that before beginning this road trip, but as I step out of my Jeep in a remote...
Twain Redux
Robert Coover tackles the impossible in Huck Out West (W.W. Norton, $26.95), a sequel to Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that puts...
Vaqueros, Buckaroos & Cowboys
Blame it on Joseph McCoy. The entrepreneur turned Abilene, Kansas, into a cowtown, which made the Chisholm Trail synonymous with cowboys and the...
The West’s Best Art Museums 2017
The best art museums don’t just show you art. They show you history. They show you personalities. They move you. Our top museums certainly did that...
A Murderous Trail
They came from Texas—and not because they’d heard that Chugwater chili was better than anything you’d find in Terlingua. They arrived in Cheyenne,...
A Western Shootist is Born
Late afternoon finds me on the square in Springfield, Missouri, seeking the spot where Wild Bill Hickok gunned down Dave Tutt in that classic...
When the Hills Bled Blue in the Boom of ’92
Douglas Magnus, the iconic silversmith in Santa Fe, New Mexico, shows me around the historic turquoise mines he owns in the nearby Cerrillos Hills....
There’s Copper in Them Thar Hills
Author Mike Anderson prefers talking about the legends who played at Warren Ballpark in Bisbee, Arizona—Connie Mack, Honus Wagner, Jim Thorpe and...
Little Houses on the Prairie
She was born in a house her father built. A little house, naturally. Her father would build many more little houses as he carried his family from...