Although Pancho Villa—whose real name was Doroteo Arango—is the best known figure of the Mexican Revolution, Villa would perhaps never have gained...
Pancho Villa and the El Paso Connection
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Features & Gunfights
Did Jesse James Jump?
Jesse James dug his spurs into his horse, pushing for speed while bullets flew past his head. For two weeks, Jesse had been running and hiding from...
Needles and Cats
In 1985, shortly before we were to set off on a vacation to Argentina, Dan read Larry Pointer's In Search of Butch Cassidy and learned that Butch...
Denver or Die!
David A. Butterfield was the right man, with the right idea, for the right place. A passenger and freight stage run from Atchison, Kansas, to...
The Deadwood Stage
“Rumbling noisily through the black canyon road to Deadwood, at an hour long past midnight, came the stage from Cheyenne, loaded down with...
Rocking Coach Adventures
A quintessential “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” innovator who had little formal education and was himself a mere stagecoach driver would go...
Whiskey Rows
At 47, merchant Philip Drachman teamed his freight overland from Yuma, Arizona, by mule train before the Southern Pacific reached his home base in...
The Last Cowboy President?
Lyndon B. Johnson compared going to Vietnam’s aid to coming to the aid of the defenders at the Alamo. Leonid Brezhnev derided Ronald Reagan as a...
Camera in the Cow Camps
At the turn of the 20th century, a young cowboy obsessed over how he could best preserve true cowboy culture. Erwin Evans Smith, born in 1886,...
Was He a Hero?
How did Buffalo Bill Cody survive the ravages of time? He has a prestigious historical center in Cody, Wyoming, named in his honor and is the theme...
True Texas Cowboys
As a teen in the 1880s, my great-grandfather Tolbert Alexander Burford worked as a wrangler and cowboy during the end of the great cattle drives. In...
The 20-Mule Team’s Miracle Mineral
The year was 1883, and muleskinners were earning more than college graduates ($120 per month). It was hard-earned money, fraught with danger both...