When you think of the savagery of the Old West, Minnesota doesn’t leap to mind. Montana, yes; South Dakota, yes; Arizona, yes, but not a Midwestern...
“If they’re hungry, let them eat grass”
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Features & Gunfights
What were They Reading and Singing?
• Mary Shelley’s forever popular monster story, Frankenstein, was published in 1818. • The timeless classic, “Home Sweet Home” was first sung in...
Did Brigham Young Order a Massacre?
On September 11, 1857, 120 men, women and children—pioneers from Arkansas headed for California—were massacred after being promised safe passage...
The Saint of Stillwater Prison
The closest the surviving Younger brothers ever got to heaven was a prison guard who may be declared a saint by the Roman Catholic Church. “Barney”...
The Pony Express
America was exploding in the mid-1800s. From coast to coast, it was a time of great anxiety—the Civil War was looming, the Mexican War was waging,...
Rendezvous
Before the Oregon Trail, before the cattle drives, before Wild Bill Hickok and Wyatt Earp, fur trappers—mountain men—opened the West. In their...
Everybody Hates Me!
Terry “Ike” Clanton, 44, is proud of his outlaw relatives. He thinks they got a raw deal at the so-called O.K. Corral gunfight. And he thinks Ike is...
Have Bar Will Travel
If it could talk, what stories this old bar could tell. Wyatt Earp himself likely dispensed beer, wine and spirits from behind its mahogany facade...
The Long Arm of the Law
Enforcing the law in the early West was a vocation for stout, fearless men. And yet there were at least three who extended the long arm of the law...
America Looks West
They were so bold, so brave and so bodacious that their journey would not only be America’s first great expedition, but also its most important one...
The Wild Bunch
Who was the Wild Bunch? What crimes can be attributed to the gang? And who participated in those crimes? These questions defy simple answers. Take...
Back at the Ranch
Buenos Aires, 1901 When Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid and Ethel Place arrived in Buenos Aires in late March 1901, they undoubtedly hoped to put...