If you mention the word “sports” in the same breath with the “Old West,” most people will give you a blank stare. Yet sports were as much a part of...
Sports in the Wild West
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Features & Gunfights
The Weird Weird West
Under the category of weird but true, the Old West offered enough episodes to fill a sensation-mongering newspaper. Make that 100 newspapers. Some...
Deadwood’s Lost Chinatown
A Chinese man enters a barn followed by Doc Cochran and Johnny Burns, a thug working for the infamous saloon owner, Al Swearengen. The Chinese man...
Wyatt Earp Punts?
From handball to football, from polo to golf, and from the Tombstone Tigers to the Wyoming State Penitentiary All-Stars, true Westerners have always...
The Art of Disaster
John Mulvany was an artist in search of a masterpiece. He’d been preparing for it almost all of his life. Born in Ireland in 1844, he came to New...
The Racial Frontier
Men of African descent were in the West since the time of Spanish exploration in the 16th century. Estevanico, a Black slave from Morocco, was among...
Tipis on the Terreplein
On September 20, 1886, 383 men, women and children of the Chiricahua and Warm Springs Apache bands arrived in Jacksonville, Florida. They were on...
Doc and the Wright Stuff
Trouble seemed to follow Doc Holliday. And in the case of Charlie Wright, that was literally true. That’s according to Dr. Gary Roberts’ new book...
She Taught the Kid a Lesson
So little information exists about the childhood and youth of Billy the Kid that many of us, happening upon the merest morsel, swallow it eagerly...
A Blood-Stained Memento
They met that March 11, 1884, in Austin, Texas, by chance or plan ... we don’t know for sure. But their meeting was to be an historic and a tragic...
I’ve Not Been Everywhere, Man.
As a lifelong fan of the West, I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit that there’s a few Old West historic sites that I haven’t visited yet. Most...
Nothing Left but Dust
Put me somewhere west of East Street, where there’s nothing left but dust, And the boys are all abustling and everything’s gone bust; And where the...