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...
Following the Bent Brothers
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Renegade Roads
Hell on Wheels
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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...
Lords of the West
Birthed in Canada, the Hudson’s Bay Company was founded on May 2, 1670, when King Charles granted a charter to his cousin, Prince Rupert,...
Canyons, Chasms and Cataracts
Not long after his graduation from West Point, Lt. George M. Wheeler became an assistant survey engineer in the San Francisco area. Promoted to...