True West Blog
The Outlaw Trail

The Outlaw Trail

An outlaw trail ranged all the way from Canada to Mexico and Butch Cassidy knew the way like the back of his hand. He wasn’t wanted in a number of...

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Stagecoach Travel

Stagecoach Travel

Stagecoach travel was no place for sissies. The Butterfield Overland Mail began its three-year 2,800 mile run from Tipton, Missouri to San Francisco...

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Ben Johnson – Oklahoma Cowboy

Ben Johnson – Oklahoma Cowboy

Howard Hughes is credited with bringing Ben Johnson out to Hollywood from Oklahoma in the late 1930s and introducing him to director John Ford. An...

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Sadie Earp

Sadie Earp

Sadie was already turning tricks when she was a young teenager. She was a free spirit who took up acting in a traveling show. There were few career...

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Arkansas Tom

Arkansas Tom

Oklahoma and the Indian Territory provided some of the West’s wildest history including one of its deadliest gunfights. The battle occurred on...

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The Birth of the Horseless Carriage

The Birth of the Horseless Carriage

“YOU ONLY HAVE TO FEED ‘EM WHEN YOU USE ‘EM” Prior to 1800 never has there been a period that experienced such dramatic changes as the 19th century....

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The First Kill

The First Kill

John Wesley Hardin’s first victim may have been unarmed. November 1868--exact date unknown. John Wesley Hardin guns down a former slave called Maje...

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A Lonely End

A Lonely End

Doc Holliday’s last days were sad and solitary. November 8, 1887. Doc Holliday succumbs to the ravages of tuberculosis and pneumonia (and hard...

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Nogales, Oklahoma

Nogales, Oklahoma

In the mid-50's Hollywood came out to the historic San Rafael Ranch, east of Nogales and filmed the long-running Broadway Rogers and Hammerstein...

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Pioneer Women

Pioneer Women

I used to perform the old folk song, “Waggoner’s Lad” and the first lines were “Hard luck is the fortune of all womenkind. They’re always...

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Andy Cooper

Andy Cooper

Looking at his photo Andy “Cooper” Blevins looks like a nice choir boy but behind that façade was a young man mean enough to eat off the same plate...

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