During the early years of the Santa Fe Trade, Americans determined that mules, the hybrid offspring of a mare horse and male donkey in New Mexico...
Mules A mule has better “horse sense” than a horse...
read more
Blog
Buckskin Frank Leslie Many gaps remain in the real Buckskin Frank’s death....
There is a story about old man who died in San Diego back in 1948. He was admitted under the name of Barney McCoy but shortly before he died, he...
Birth Of The Social Bandit The best example of a social bandit came in the latter days of the Old West, was Butch Cassidy...
By the latter part of the nineteenth century train robberies had become big business among western outlaws. During one period trains were being...
Vengeance For Flat Nose Kid Curry got revenge for his outlaw mentor.
Outlaw George Curry was better known as “Flat Nose” because of a facial deformity. In the 1880s, he was a criminal mentor to Harvey Logan, who...
The Big Haul Rustler Bill Cruzan’s move to train robbery paid dividends.
Bill Cruzan was an off and on member of the Wild Bunch. In the 1890s, he was primarily known as a rustler and spent three years in prison for...
Let Sleeping Outlaws Lie Sheriff Jesse Tyler awoke the wrong men.
Grand County (UT) Sheriff Jesse Tyler wasn’t expecting trouble on the morning of May 26, 1900. He and two deputies—on the lookout for members of...
Hygiene In The West Saturday night bath?
I was reading 'Good Little Bad Man', the story of Colorado Charley Utter. It was noted that Charley had the habit, thought odd at the time, of...
Cigars, Pipes And Cigarettes Did cowboys prefer to smoke cigarettes, pipes, or cigars, when out on the trail?
Cigarettes and cigars have been around for a long time. Prior to the Civil War cigars ranked next to chewing tobacco in popularity. They were...
Apache Pass In movies the stage tries always to outrun the bad guys or Indians. Did that ever work?
Chasing a stagecoach was mostly the stuff of Hollywood because it added more drama to the event. In reality, the stage robbers tried to find a...
A Plot In Portland Why was Virgil Earp buried in Oregon?
Virgil Earp mostly live in the Southwest into California and Nevada. But he ended up in a grave in Portland, Oregon. Earp was married in 1860 and...
From Stuntman To Star Ben Johnson’s act of courage earned him a fat contract.
Ben Johnson was a cowboy who broke into Hollywood as a stuntman in the 1940s. He was the stunt double for Henry Fonda in 1948’s Fort Apache. ...
Didn’t Have A Prayer George Wilson called out to God, and then…
A Prescott, Arizona Territory posse was after George Wilson and his pal. They’d murdered a man in October 1877. Virgil Earp was deputized—his...