Photography became available just in time to capture most of the Westward movement of our nation. Although too late for the Spanish Southwest and...
Rare Images of the Old West
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Features & Gunfights
Pike’s Peak or Bust!
On the first day of summer in 1850, John Beck, a Cherokee preacher en route to California’s goldfields, stopped to do a little panning along the...
Judging the Peace
Mexican raiders swam across the Rio Grande, showing off their freshly-stolen beeves, taunting Capt. Leander McNelly and his Special Force of Texas...
Legendary Rancher
Nobody was going to sneak up on ol’ Tap Duncan on the Diamond Bar Ranch, tucked away as it was in a remote corner of Arizona’s Mohave County....
Luck of the Draw
General Santa Anna ordered every single Texan prisoner executed—men, fighting for the Republic of Texas. A total of 214 of them had been captured in...
Luck of the Draw
General Santa Anna ordered every single Texan prisoner executed—men, fighting for the Republic of Texas. A total of 214 of them had been captured in...
Legendary Rancher
Nobody was going to sneak up on ol’ Tap Duncan on the Diamond Bar Ranch, tucked away as it was in a remote corner of Arizona’s Mohave County....
One for the Grave
Outlaw John Shaw gulped his last whiskey while surrounded by 15 cowboys as the sun rose over the cemetery in Canyon Diablo, Arizona Territory. One...
Landowners Bet the Farm
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...
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...