Blame it on Joseph McCoy. The entrepreneur turned Abilene, Kansas, into a cowtown, which made the Chisholm Trail synonymous with cowboys and the...
Vaqueros, Buckaroos & Cowboys
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Features & Gunfights
Death-Defying Riders of the Pony Express
When America’s first Pony Express rider set off on April 3, 1860, from St. Joseph, Missouri, launching a coast-to-coast transfer of news and...
“¡No Tire en la Casa!”
May 10, 1871 Tracking a party of rough hombres, Alameda County Sheriff Harry Morse and San Jose Deputy Theodore “Sam” Winchell approach a ranch...
The Man Who Invented Billy the Kid
Long before Walter Noble Burns arrived on the scene with his Saga of Billy the Kid in the 1920s, the largely fictitious events presented in Pat...
Big Iron On His Hip
I met Marty Robbins in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, at a National Cowboy Hall of Fame event in 1979. He was there to receive the Golden Trustee Award...
The West’s Best Art Museums 2017
The best art museums don’t just show you art. They show you history. They show you personalities. They move you. Our top museums certainly did that...
In Search of the Real Curly Bill
Amazingly, historians know so little about the most famous cow-boy in Cochise County history—“Curly Bill” Brocius. In a journal entry written in...
The Rise of the Cow-Boys
The cowboys’ genesis lay in the savvy and the six-shooters of John Kinney, one of the most notorious outlaws of the Southwest. Kinney was a New...
Top 10 Museums of The West 2017
Museums across the West are embracing an ever-widening range of stories to interpret—from the geology and paleontology of the landscape to the...
Buffalo Bill: Why He Still Matters
William F. Cody was a man seemingly trapped in the distant past, yet one who cared desperately about the onrushing future…
Buffalo Bill & His “Blood-Thirsty” Indians
"Heap-big Injun likum Paris?” asked The New York Times reporter. Chief Daniel Black Horn replied, “I think it might facilitate matters for you if I...
Dressed To Kill
A mere two weeks have passed since the 5th Cavalry learned of George Custer’s devastating defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Some 350...