When one imagines pristine Arizona’s dry, desolate, sun-baked deserts in the 1850s it’s difficult to picture any of it as being a utopian Shangri La...
Arizona’s Shangri La
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True West Blog
Death Valley Scotty
It was called The Battle of Wingate Pass—but it was a con job by the famed Walter “Death Valley Scotty” Scott. In 1906, Scotty was taking an...
Doc’s Gal
The relationship of Doc Holliday and “Big Nose Kate” is well known. But when did it start? Many accounts say the pair met in Ft. Griffin, TX in...
James Brothers First Heist, Maybe?
Tradition says that Jesse and Frank James pulled their first bank heist on February 13, 1866 when they hit the Clay County Savings Bank in Liberty,...
Pony Diehl
Charles Ray liked to hang out with bad guys. Going by the name Pony Diehl (or Deal), he first gained notice as a member of the John Kinney and...
Dry Diggins
Back in 1848, the year it was founded, the California town was called “Dry Diggins” because of the gold mining efforts nearby. That lasted about a...
The Brief And Violent Life Of Cherokee Bill
Crawford Goldsby, aka "Cherokee Bill", was born February 8th, 1876 at Fort Concho, Texas. He was the son of George Goldsby, a sergeant in the 10th...
James Bailey Of The Barnum and Bailey Circus
James Bailey is probably the least known of the founders of the soon to close Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus. An orphan born in...
Yes, They Were Romantic
If history does not offer evidence to support the notion that Billy the Kid and Paulita Maxwell had a relationship, it also does not offer evidence...
To The Last Man
In the aftermath, of Arizona’s Tewksbury-Graham War Tom Graham, the last of the fighting Graham’s got married and settled down in Tempe. But feuds...
Pleasant Valley War
Feuds usually occurred in remote places and fighting flared when the law was unavailable, unable or unwilling to intervene. Conflicts usually...
Attracted To Bad: Laura Bullion
You might say Laura Bullion was a girlfriend of outlaws. She grew up in Knickerbocker, Texas and knew locals like Ben Kilpatrick and Will Carver of...