True West Blog
A Violent 18 Months

A Violent 18 Months

Texas outlaw Brack Cornett had a short but violent run on the outlaw trail. Starting in May 1887, Cornett and gang leader Bill Whitley nabbed tens...

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Crimes on Emigrant Wagon Trains

Crimes on Emigrant Wagon Trains

Emigrants heading west in covered wagons usually had a wagon master who knew the trails and had experience getting through the trials and travails...

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Tumbleweed Wagons

Tumbleweed Wagons

They called them “tumbleweed wagons” because like their namesake, the Russian thistle, they seemed to wander aimlessly across the territory picking...

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A Stormy Affair

A Stormy Affair

On August 6, 1895, gunman John Wesley Hardin nearly got into a strange shootout. He and his lover Helen Beulah Mrose were in an El Paso (photo)...

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Losing Control

Losing Control

By the time he died in August 1895, John Wesley Hardin had finished about 200 pages of his autobiography, up to the year 1889. Researchers Chuck...

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Free Trappers

Free Trappers

Basically there were only two types of trappers, the engage, or lowly company employee who worked for wages and the enterprising aristocrat of the...

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The Rendezvous

The Rendezvous

Like gold dust on the mining frontier, beaver pelts acted as the medium of exchange in the mountains. Unique to the American experience was the...

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