Susan Mims Barnesville, Georgia Women worked the saloons, dancing or serving drinks or luring male customers upstairs. But female owners or part...
Did frontier women own saloons, like Gunsmoke’s Miss Kitty did?
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Departments
On the Hunt for Geronimo
Five thousand against 140! With Geronimo’s breakout from the San Carlos Reservation in Arizona on May 17, 1885, the U.S. Army conducted the most...
A picture hanging in a restaurant in Prescott, Arizona, is labeled, “Wyatt Earp.” Is this a photo of him?
Tom Isler Madera, California I have never seen this photo published in any of the Wyatt Earp biographies; somebody would have published it if the...
The Myth of Whiskey
Not all American West pioneers walked up to bars, like Hollywood Westerns often portray, and ordered shots of whiskey. In fact, most would have...
Did Bat Masterson carry a cane?
Bob Nellis Rochester, Minnesota No known photos of Bat Masterson show him with a cane, although he did receive a gold-headed cane in 1885 when he...
Building the Central Pacific Railroad
A century and a half ago, steel rails began stretching across the landscape to link this nation. In an 1832 article published by the New York...
Geronimo Prize Breaks Record
A Model 1886 Winchester rifle presented to the man who captured Apache leader Geronimo 130 years ago this August is now the most expensive single...
Tombstone’s True Hero
In the spring of 1896, during the manhunt for the Apache Kid, Arizona’s most wanted, Tombstone surveyor H.G. Howe recommended to Sen. William M....
What is the origin of bib shirts?
Allen Fossenkemper Fountain Hills, Arizona Although bib shirts were not common apparel out West, they captured the flavor and romance of the...
Crusade for a Chief
He resembled George Washington and helped save Gen. George Crook’s men at the Battle of the Rosebud during the Great Sioux War of 1876—this Shoshone...
Butch Cassidy and the Last Standing Bank
Butch Cassidy, was given the name Robert Leroy Parker at birth, born to a poor Mormon family in Beaver, Utah. As a teen Parker set off to find a new...
In the 1985 film Silverado, British-born John Cleese plays the sheriff. Did any Britons become frontier sheriffs in the USA?
Paul Piper Dorset, England Legendary gunfighter Ben Thompson comes to mind. At the age of seven, he immigrated to America from his birthplace of...