The story goes that Buckskin Frank Leslie used to stand his wife May against a wall and shoot bullets in an outline around her body—something that...
Shooting the Silhouette
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True West Blog
Frontier Women
“I felt a secret joy to have the power that set things straight.” Anonymous Women performed a labor more valuable than gold by pressing for schools,...
The Gang Lawyer
Jason Brevoort Brown was an opportunist, a lawyer and politician in Indiana during the last half of the 19th century. He represented the Jackson...
Rattlesnake Bites
It’s the time of year when rattlesnakes are more likely to hole up during the daytime and be active at night so I thought it best to share what to...
Land Grabbers
By 1865, the Wilkison Reno family owned more land than anyone else in Jackson County, IN. They got it the old fashioned way: crime. The acquired...
Bisbee Queen of the Copper Camps
In the spring of 1877 Sergeant Jack Dunn, a government scout from Fort Bowie, was winding his way down what later became known as Tombstone Canyon...
The Night of Blood
The night of December 12, 1868, about 50 men hijacked a train from Seymour to New Albany, IN. Once there, they took over the county jail (wounding...
The Origins of the Babylon of the West
In 1829, New Mexico Antonio Armijo, a merchant-explorer, leading a trading expedition, blazed the “Old Spanish Trail” through what would become Las...
“Ain’t Suited for the Government”
Commodore Perry Owens is best known for killing three men in a Holbrook, AZ gunfight in 1887. He reportedly had a number of additional notches on...
Lieutenant John Anthony Rucker
On December 2nd, 1876 a group of Bedonkohe Apache, probably led by Geronimo stole some horses near Camp Crittenden on Sonita Creek in southern...
Doroteo Arango
Doroteo Arango was born in the settlement of Rio Grande, in the Mexican state of Durango on June 5th, 1878. It is said that on the night of his...
Keep it in the Family
Commodore Perry Owens had a problem keeping deputies when he was sheriff of Apache County, AZ in the late 1880s and of Navajo County, AZ in the mid...