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...

With all the controversy about an alleged new Billy the Kid photo, a 2010 TW article examined an earlier controversy: an effort to dig up Billy and...

Texas’ Regulator-Moderator War was one of the worst feuds ever.  Dozens of folks died in the east Texas conflict between 1839 and 1844.  But bad...

Bill Boren believed in revenge.  No matter who the target was. The former Confederate soldier was a fighter in Texas’ Lee-Peacock Feud at the end of...

The legend of Johnny Ringo is just that. Ringo was born in Indiana, not Texas.  He dropped out of school at age 14; he was not a college grad (or...

Major Marcus Reno’s reputation is of the coward of the Little Bighorn, the man who let Custer and his men die, who lost control of his command and...

Cattle were king in the Old West, an economic and cultural foundation that fed the myth—until the Great Die Off. The summer of 1886 brought a...

The tale of Tom Carson fits the bill of Old West fabrications that have been recorded as fact. Storytellers claimed Tom was the nephew of legendary...

In 1897, Augustus Thomas was one of America’s most successful playwrights, but he’d hit a dry spell.  So a neighbor in New Rochelle, NY suggested he...

Lottie Deno was an Old West success story. Born in 1844, she became a professional gambler in the 1860s—a rarity for a woman. She and her...