John Wayne almost made an appearance in the comedy Western, Blazing Saddles. Director Mel Brooks was eating lunch in the Warner Bros. commissary one...
A Different Blazing Saddles?
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Mark Boardman
Gene Wilder
The late Gene Wilder wasn’t the original Waco Kid in the comedy “Blazing Saddles.” Veteran actor Gig Young got the role of the drunken gunfighter....
George Parsons: Tombstone Insider
Much of what we know about the colorful characters of Tombstone is thanks to George Whitwell Parsons. An Easterner who was trained as a lawyer,...
A Holdup for the Ages
Just after 6:30 p.m. on October 6, 1866, two passengers aboard an Ohio & Mississippi train put on pasteboard masks—one black, one white—pulled...
Rowdy Joe vs. William Red Beard
Old West gunfights occasionally inflicted collateral damage. That was the case in October 1873 when rival saloon owners “Rowdy Joe” Lowe (pictured)...
The Tale That Won’t Die
It’s been called the West’s bloodiest gunfight. Hugh Anderson and Arthur McCluskie met in the middle of the main street in Medicine Lodge, Indian...
Pete Spence
Elliott Larkin Ferguson is best known to history as Pete Spence, one of the Cowboys of Tombstone. Probably his biggest claim to fame—his connection...
A Wannabe Badman
James Bliss was a loser. Time and time again, he tried and failed to be a noted Old West badman. A gunfighter, rustler, robber, and whatever else he...
Marshal Harvey Whitehill
Silver City, New Mexico Marshal, Harvey Whitehill was working to solve a train robbery at Gage Station. The November 1883 heist had netted less than...
The Jaybird-Woodpecker War
The Jaybird-Woodpecker War has the most colorful name in Texas feuds. It supposedly came from a black man who sang songs about those birds. The...
Rock Springs Massacre
Tensions over Chinese immigrant labor came to a head in Rock Springs, Wyoming on September 2, 1885. White workers were upset that the Union Pacific...
Tilghman’s Tall Tale
The story goes that Deputy U.S. Marshal Bill Tilghman was tracking the Doolin Gang in January 1895. He entered a dugout on the Dunn ranch, looking...