Lincoln’s origin story doesn’t involve an Indian uprising or a whisky-soaked shootout. The town was founded as Lancaster in 1856, and the reason was...
Lincoln, Nebraska
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Travel & Preservation
The Diné Return to the Four Corners
Fort Sumner, New Mexico, has never been an easy place to live. Winters can be brutal. Summers are often blistering. The scenery’s spartan. Few...
Standing Bear’s Trials to Indian Rights
Indian removal doesn’t get the coverage of Indian conflict. To wit, Google searches on “Ponca” netted 5.2 million hits, compared with 239 million...
The Central Pacific’s Chinese Trail
Without the back-breaking labor of Chinese immigrants the pivotal event in the development of the nation—the laying of the last rail and placing of...
Saratoga, Wyoming
The name Fenimore Chatterton doesn’t ring many bells in Western history, but it does around Saratoga, Wyoming. The businessman and politician...
Oregon at 160
When wealthy trapper Ewing Young died in 1841 in what is Oregon today, he had no apparent heirs, and there was no way to determine how to handle his...
Fire Engulfs Paramount Western Ranch
The cost in human life and property from the fires that blazed through California in November 2018 cannot yet be calculated. The cost to Western...
Cochise, Cowboys and Cavalry
The first thing you notice about Willcox, Arizona, is the wine. Wineries. Wine-tasting rooms. Wine festivals. Wine has practically taken over this...
Kingsville, Texas
No Hollywood writer could invent the life of Richard King. He was born in New York in 1824 into an Irish family so poor that, at age 9, he...
Tombstone 25—A Western Classic’s Reunion
It’s not often that a movie becomes a cult classic almost immediately after its release, but such was the case with the 1993 motion picture...
Raised from the Dead
Looting, wildfires, pollution, vandalism, time, the elements—Western ghost towns have lots of enemies. Thankfully, they’ve also got friends like...
Following the Bent Brothers
So much of the Western story begins in St. Louis, and the tale of William and Charles Bent is no exception. From a family of eleven children, the...