It was a hot August night back in 1900 when 600 Phoenix residents—one of every five citizens in this dusty spot in the Arizona Territory—gathered in...
Landowners Bet the Farm
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Features & Gunfights
Wanted: Billy the Kid Wanted Poster
For most of the last century, historians believed Billy the Kid never appeared on a...
Dirty Digs
After recalling a sod house he’d seen at one of the stage stations between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Carson City, Nevada, in 1861, Mark Twain wrote...
Placing Blame
Just after dawn on November 29, 1864, elements of the First and Third Colorado Regiments commanded by Col. John M. Chivington attacked a peaceful...
One Continental Union
It’s Monday, May 10, 1869, 2:40 p.m., Eastern time. For the first time, the entire nation is riveted to one event. “We have got done praying, the...
Seasick on the Prairie
Author Mark Twain likened the stagecoach to “an imposing cradle on wheels,” referring to the consistent sway of the vehicle that made some...
Hitching Your Wagon to a Star
America turned to its own “camel of the prairie” to expand west—not a humped animal that could withstand the desert, as we normally think of camels,...
The Coming of the Sacred Dog
"The God of the Christians is dead. He was made of rotten wood.” These words, allegedly uttered in his native language by Tewa holy man Popé, marked...
Handcarts and Heartaches
"Brethren and sisters, what I have said, I know to be true.” Levi Savage was a lone voice that hot August morning in 1856 as he graphically warned...
Stamp-ede!
The West was still wild around the edges when a bit of it was captured on a stamp set commemorating the Trans-Mississippi Exposition, held in Omaha,...
It Ain’t Really Him! . . . Or is it?
When we see an Old West photograph in a book or magazine, can we believe the subject is who or what it is said to be? At one time, I believed...
Take No Prisoners
The late November dawn broke cold and foggy. Below the barren Southeastern Colorado plain, some 600 Arapaho and Cheyenne Indians were camped in a...