Once Missouri-born Samuel Clemens headed west in July 1861, he began his lifelong career of penning frontier life accounts that were both serious...
Mark Twain’s Vittles and Viands
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Art, Guns and Culture
Dinner in Deadwood with Calamity Jane
In the fall of 1875, a makeshift tent town popped up, beginning a stampede to Deadwood Gulch. By the winter of 1876, the population of this Dakota...
Colt’s Paterson—the Foaling of a Legend
Firearms buffs generally associate Colt’s Paterson revolver, the first truly practical revolver, with the year 1836, when this revolutionary handgun...
A Woman’s Work is Never Done
The Plains Indian women’s role in the buffalo hunt was no small thing. “Theirs was harder work than buffalo hunting,” explained John C. Ewers, in...
Gourmet Glitz at Gateway to the West
When high society ladies threw a party in the West, they spared no expense. Women living in rural areas had their challenges, but the wealthy ladies...
A Collection of Criminals
Collectors knew Norman Flayderman as the man behind the bible of American firearms, Flayderman’s Guide to Antique American Firearms...and Their...
Rescuing Silver Strike History
Talk about the mother lode. Imagine trying to preserve hundreds of projects in a 14,000-acre district—not only one of the nation’s largest historic...
The Picnic Disease
As towns across the frontier West heated up during the spring and summer months, sweltering pioneers found ways to beat the heat at picnics. They...
Hell on the Buffalo Range
Life on the buffalo range was hard, dangerous work, often accomplished in extreme heat or freezing conditions, sometimes under the watchful eye of...
A First for Custer Firearms
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...
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...