Renegade Roads Archives

Hell on Wheels

by Candy Moulton | Oct 4, 2018

A century and a half ago the Iron Horse galloped across the prairie and plains of Nebraska then over and around the mountains and across the...

Pursuing Outlaw Sam Bass

by Johnny D. Boggs | Aug 17, 2018

There wasn’t much to Big Springs, Nebraska, in 1877. As Al Sorenson noted in his 1877 book, Hands Up! The History of a Crime, Big Springs was “a...

Trailing the Wild Bunch

by Candy Moulton | Jul 12, 2018

Two of the best-known bank and train robbers of the 19th century spent time in jail and prison—for horse theft—and not a day behind bars for...

Steamboats on the Missouri

by Candy Moulton | Apr 25, 2018

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark took their Corps of Discovery expedition up the Missouri River using keelboats and pirogues that they poled and...

Peace on the High Plains

by Candy Moulton | Mar 16, 2018

Red Cloud and other Lakota leaders met with Indian Commissioners at Fort Laramie in 1866 intending to negotiate an agreement that would allow safe...

Cattle, Cowboys and Culture

by Johnny D. Boggs | Feb 27, 2018

If you’re a vegetarian, stop reading. Unless you like opera. We don’t think of cattle towns as cultural meccas, but many of them were. And still...

Blood on the Earth

by Johnny D. Boggs | Jan 26, 2018

Two months separated the 1868 clashes between the U.S. military and the Indians at Beecher Island and the Washita River. One is known for heroism on...

Hancock’s War

by Johnny D. Boggs | Nov 24, 2017

Second Lieutenant Lyman S. Kidder, 7th Cavalry, was unlucky. I knew that before beginning this road trip, but as I step out of my Jeep in a remote...

Reveille on the Overland Trail

by Candy Moulton | Oct 20, 2017

Ohio State Senator William O. Collins, a proponent of war-funding after the attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861, took a stronger stand for the Union...