Arizona is a wild, untamed land of jagged mountains and barren deserts making it an ideal place for lost mines and treasures. These lost treasure...
Hualapai Joe’s Lost Loot
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True West Blog
True West Treasure Hunters
If you look back at old True West issues—back in the ‘50s and ‘60s, when Joe “Hosstail” Small was ramrodding the outfit—you’ll see a lot of familiar...
“Big Boy” Guinn Williams
Actor Guinn Williams carried the nickname of “Big Boy” due to his 6’2” frame. The native Texan and experienced cowboy got his Hollywood start in...
Claw-fingered Kitty, a.k.a. Eva Dugan
A few months ago a friend up in Yukon Territory wrote asking for some information on a lady of the evening who resided in the red light district of...
Patrick Wayne
Patrick Wayne was only 11 when he got to visit his father on a movie set for the first time. The film was “Rio Grande,” directed by John Ford, set...
A Fateful Game of Cards
A strange card game decided the fate of six Apache warriors, captured by U.S. troops in southwest Arizona in 1861. Lt. Isaiah Moore and Asst....
Chief Mangas Coloradas
In early 1861, the great Apache Chief Mangas Coloradas went to a mining camp at Santa Rita in New Mexico. He was going to tell the miners of richer...
Bandit Queen Belle Starr
Myra Maybelle Shirley, was another Old West personality who might have been forgotten had she not been reinvented by a novelist. The so-called...
Charles Poston
Charles Poston was several years away from being “The Father of Arizona” when he met with Apache leader Mangas Coloradas in southeast New Mexico in...
Old West Prisons Were No Place for Sissies
Rules For Inmates at the Wyoming Territorial Prison: Rules for Inmates: You will not be allowed to converse with each other on any subject...
The Lucky Cuss Mine
The story of rags-to-riches prospector Ed Schieffelin and his Lucky Cuss Mine is one of Arizona’s greatest Horatio Algier success stories. In 1877,...
Cyclone Bill
Bill Beck was a well-known character to the bartenders around Arizona. He’d studied law as a young man in Texas but didn’t practice long. No sooner...