The “first firearm forensically proven to have been used” at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, as the auction catalog noted, hammered down for a...
A First for Custer Firearms
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Art, Guns and Culture
The Tombstone Collector
Jim Melikian was window shopping. Normally, the 61-year-old Arizona businessman scoured auction catalogs for items he’s been collecting since he...
The Sideways Grip—Cool or Crazy?
Hollywood loves the catchy, visual “piece of business,” as moviemakers like to say. One thing that has caught on big-time with modern films, and in...
A Big Bang Year
Oliver Winchester introduced a legendary brand to the world in 1866, and in 2016, the 150th anniversary year of Winchester Repeating Arms, his brand...
A Pistoleer Goes Semi Auto
While we generally think of the Wild West as the era of the revolver—and it certainly was—the last decade of the 19th century and the dawning of the...
A Stone Sentinel Stands Tall Again
Seven feet tall. Ten inches square. Eight hundred pounds. Once, 720 of them. Every half-mile from Minnesota to Montana. Standing since 1891 or...
The Man Collectors Trust
Brian Lebel has had his hands on some pretty amazing Western history. He is the guy who brought the Billy the Kid tintype to the True West offices,...
Crown City’s Old Vistas
Box after box of photos. Day after day. One image more fabulous than the next. Photographer Todd Stands thought he knew a lot about “Coronado...
Denver’s Unsinkable Hostess
Before she became famous as the “Unsinkable Molly Brown,” after surviving the 1912 sinking of Titanic, Margaret Tobin-Brown arrived in Denver,...
Hand Over the Ice Cream
In 1850, a new ice cream saloon in San Francisco, California, greeted patrons with the aromas of vanilla and lemon. The Alta California described...
A Pistol For Dragoons
With the adoption of the U.S. Dragoons on March 5, 1833, the U.S. Army found itself woefully lacking in pistols for a mounted unit. Handguns at that...
Portrait of a Mountain Man
Albert Bierstadt legitimized the Western American landscape as a serious subject, first bringing to the East and the world the majestic...