In 1849 it took 166 days to travel coast to coast. By the 1860’s you could do it in 60 days. A decade later a train could make the trip in 11 days....
The Jackass Mail
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True West Blog
The Dodge City War
What became known as the “Dodge City War” began when Luke Short returned to Dodge in April, 1881 and went to work at the Long Branch Saloon. Two...
W.H.H. Llewellyn
W.H.H. Llewellyn was a major player in the West. In the late 1870s, he tracked down rustler Doc Middleton and his gang in Nebraska, Wyoming and the...
“Quick Shot” Scott Davis
They nicknamed Scott Davis “Quick Shot” because of his skill with weapons—especially over the 15 years he rode shotgun on stages in the Dakotas and...
The Final Years of the James-Younger Gang
The James-Younger gang's incredible streak of good luck ran out in Northfield, Minnesota, on September 7th, 1876 when the eight-member gang rode...
Celerity and Mud Wagons
Everyone’s familiar with Abbott-Donning Concord Stagecoach from the western movies but in reality the Celerity and Mud wagons were the stagecoach of...
Border Crossers
In the old days (early twentieth century) riders were often hard pressed to know exactly where the Mexican border was and often cowboys wandered...
Millard Fillmore Leech
Millard Fillmore Leech had his moment of fame in September 1877. A clerk at a mercantile in Ogallala, Nebraska, when he sold some red bandanas to a...
Rockwell Paints for Stagecoach
In 1966, legendary American artist Norman Rockwell was hired for a special job—painting a series of portraits for a remake of the classic Western...
True Grit On Screen
True Grit, the 1968 Charles Portis novel about a dissolute deputy U.S. marshal and a precocious teenage girl, was made into movies on two occasions....
Life In A Soddy
When the farmers got west of the 100th meridian they found themselves in short grass country where the grasses were gramma, needle and buffalo. The...
Jeff Kidder: Arizona Ranger
The Arizona Rangers were established as a territorial law enforcement agency in 1901 to curb the outlawry that was rampart in Arizona’s rural...