Outside the mining camps of Deadwood, Dakota Territory, particularly on the road leading to Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory, violent men held dominion...
Robber’s Roost Defender
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Inside History
“…Kill or Hang All Warriors…”
If one winner came out of the Battle of the Washita, his name was Custer. In 1868, Southern Cheyennes and other tribes were camped along the Washita...
From Slavery to Cattle King
Born a slave near Inez, Texas, on September 15, 1860, the year before the war began that would free him, Daniel Webster “80 John” Wallace had a...
The Father of Montana
Granville Stuart, who died 100 years ago this October, is one of the most remarkable men in the history of the West. Born in what’s now West...
The Youngest Prisoner
On July 19, 1904, Claude Hankins snuck up behind George Mosse while he was milking a cow at the Bolles Ranch. Claude put a pistol near George’s...
Upping the Ante
The Cow-boy and Earp factions were already at loggerheads in the fall of 1881. A stagecoach robbery took things to another level. On the night of...
A Daring Sense of Humor
Yuma Bill’s broad smile suggests he engaged his cavalry comrades in more than one game of “grinning through a horse collar.” Colonel George Forsyth...
Black Hills and Gold Dust
The Sioux considered the Black Hills to be sacred, the center of the earth and a place to speak to the Great Spirit. They had controlled the area...
Cold-Blooded Conman
Perhaps the most cold-blooded conman early Arizona ever knew, Louis Eytinge suffered from tuberculosis and had two months to live. He should’ve died...
The Road to and from China
Anson Burlingame is a name mostly forgotten today. But over a 22-year period, from the early 1860s through mid-1880s, he was well known in two...
The Dodge City Lawdog
Charlie Bassett’s story has been eclipsed—by the legends of Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson. Yet for much of the 1870s, Bassett was the law in Dodge...
Custer’s Conspirator
A new officer joined the 7th Cavalry in the summer of 1869, bringing with him a background that even today seems the stuff of fiction,” Charles K....