Lon and Ed Maxwell were small time criminals, petty robbers and horse thieves in Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin. And then it turned really ugly....
The Maxwell Brothers
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Mark Boardman
Fred Waite and the Lincoln County War
Fred Waite got out of the Lincoln County War alive—and managed to turn his life around. In 1878, Waite joined Billy the Kid and the Regulators. He...
Charlie Bowdre’s Blood Stained Photo
Talk about a rare photo. Billy the Kid’s friend Charlie Bowdre carried in his pocket a photo of his wife Manuela and him. That’s where it was on...
William Wilson’s Hanging
William Wilson killed Robert Casey (in photo) in August 1875 in Lincoln, NM in an incident that preceded the power war that was about to come. ...
The Outlaw Davy Crockett
Davy Crockett, the King of the Wild Frontier, was born on a mountaintop in Tennessee, served in Congress, fought Indians and died a legend at the...
Jesse James’s Publicity Agent
Jesse James had his own publicity agent—John Newman Edwards. A Confederate veteran, Edwards became a newspaperman after the war, starting the Kansas...
Pat Garrett’s Ghostwriter
Marshall Ashmun Upson—“Ash”—was an itinerant journalist (and heavy drinker) in the years after the Civil War. By 1877, he was a small rancher and...
Croquet in the West
You’ve probably heard about the photo which allegedly shows Billy the Kid and friends playing croquet in New Mexico Territory in 1878. The photo may...
More Guts Than Sense
Pinkerton detective Joseph Whicher had more guts than sense. In March 1874, he went undercover to try to catch Jesse James (in photo) by seeking...
Dan Dedrick and Billy the Kid
Hoosier-born Dan Dedrick would have been just another Old West guy—except that around 1877 or ’78, he started hanging out with Billy the Kid and the...
Remembering Butch Cassidy
Charles Kelly was a Salt Lake City printer when he got to know cowboy artist Charlie Russell. The friendship pushed Kelly to further investigate...
Writing Bill Tilghman’s Biography
Zoe Agnes Stratton was a 22-year-old school teacher when famed lawman Bill Tilghman came-a-courtin’. Despite the difference in ages—he was 48—the...