The Spanish called it Jornada del Muerto, “Journey of the Dead,” and traveling through Southern New Mexico’s desert, you might think it’s aptly...
Come and Take It
Crockett ... Travis ... Houston ... Bowie. ... The Texas Independence Trail is about icons, so it’s only fitting that the first tombstone I notice...
Railroad Rodeo
Speed across the plains behind the world’s largest steam locomotive to the legendary Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo and relive a Western tradition...
On the Edge of the Abyss
It is late August, but the air is crisp as I board the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad in Durango, Colorado. The firemen are already...
Has the Lost Dutchman Mine Been Found?
“This bug is to make my fortune,” he continued, with a triumphant smile, “to reinstate me in my family possessions. Is it any wonder then, that I...
On the Trail of Laura Ingalls Wilder
“As far as I could see, covered wagons stood one beyond another in a long, long line. Behind them and over them, high over half the sky, a yellow...
More Buffalo than Gold
Where have all the buffalo gone? You see, I first visited the Badlands and Black Hills of South Dakota in the late 1980s—before legalized gambling...
Trailing Lewis and Clark
The Missouri River northwest of Bismarck, North Dakota, is not the same river explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark saw in 1805, even though...
Following Billy the Kid
Rex Buchman says the mare I’m riding has been fed rocket fuel, but I don’t believe him. Besides, as our horses enter the Pecos River near Fort...
Down on Lewis & Clark
It’s official: Everybody wants a piece of Lewis & Clark. Except me. Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate what William Clark and Meriwether Lewis...
Following the Arkansas River
I’m driving around Wichita, Kansas, looking for the Arkansas River and I can’t find it. That is probably because I’m pronouncing it like the state...
Following Jesse James
Our usually quiet city was startled last Tuesday by one of the most cold-blooded murders, and heavy robberies on record,” The Liberty Tribune...