Features & Gunfights Archives

What were They Reading and Singing?

by Marc McCutcheon | May 1, 2003

• 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?

by Will Bagley and Ron Walker | Apr 1, 2003

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

by Brent T. Peterson | Apr 1, 2003

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

by Jana Bommersbach | Apr 1, 2003

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

by R. G. Robertson | Feb 1, 2003

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!

by Lucky Bonner | Jan 1, 2003

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

by Gary Ledoux | Jan 1, 2003

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

by Robert K. DeArment | Jan 1, 2003

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

by Jana Bommersbach | Jan 1, 2003

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...