Who would ever think a Russian peasant emigrant of the late 1800s would one day become a beacon for literacy in America? But that is the story of...
Christina Hillius
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True Westerners
Sarah Winnemucca
“I was a very small child when the first white people came into our country. They came like a lion, yes, like a roaring lion, and have continued so...
Esther Morris
The real “mother of women suffrage” is not a name you’ll find in most history books, not a name that comes immediately to mind as does Susan B....
Vera’s Life in the Circus was a Zoo
The first time Vera McGinnis entered the Big Top at Madison Square Garden in New York City, she looked like a giant Dresden Doll. She was atop a...
Jack Elam (1919-2003)
Jack Elam died October 20, 2003, at his home in Ashland, Oregon, after several years of ill health. He was recently named True West’s Best Western...
Vera’s Cowboy Done Her Wrong
If Vera McGinnis’ love story were a Country Western song, it would go something like this: “He dragged her heart around that ring, that handsome...
Narcissa Whitman
There were really two Americas in the 1800s, separated by the...
Vera McGinns
She hardly even tried to describe the pain, but of course, how could she? What words are there to recount a ton of horseflesh landing on your tiny...
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”...
Sacagawea’s Improbable Reunion
Lewis and Clark didn’t name a single landmark to commemorate their teenage interpreter, Sacagawea. They did honor her with “Bird Woman River,”...
Aunt Sally
AUNT SALLY—FIRST WOMAN IN THE BLACK HILLS. That’s all it says on her simple, rough wood headboard that now hangs in the Adams Museum in Deadwood. A...