The Redoubtable Toothbrush
The question about hygiene in the West came up the other day from someone wondering if cowboys brushed their teeth. Well, some did and some didn’t. The lack of dental care was prevalent during the 19th century. What about deodorant/body odor? Besides an occasional...
Who has Jim Bowie’s Knife from the 1836 Battle of the Alamo?
Who has Jim Bowie’s knife from the 1836 Battle of the Alamo? Ben Moskowitz South Amboy, New Jersey Nobody knows. Like most, if not all, of the personal things left behind by the defenders of the Alamo mission in San Antonio, Texas, historians have no clue what...
Hazards on the Long Trail
The Long drives from South Texas to Kansas from the 1860s to the 1880s were roughly six hundred miles and took about six weeks. I should have taken less but there were a number of obstacles to face along the way. Grass and water or lack thereof could cause problems....
Stories of the Oregon Trail
When the travelers loaded their wooden wheeled wagons and hitched oxen or mules to begin a nearly 2,000-mile journey from the Missouri River to Oregon Country in 1843, they could not envision that 175 years later their journeys would be legendary. Ezra Meeker began a...
True West March/April 2025
In This Issue:
Western Books & Movies
More In This Issue
- Truth Be Known
- What Has Taught Me: Deb Goodrich
- Earp, Cowboy Songs & Prairie Hygiene
- Trails of the Old West
- The Frontier Characters of South Dakota
- The Bowie Knife
- The Kindled Flame 1835
- King of the Scatterguns
- Selling the Mythic West and the Real West
- A Gut Punch Turns into a Miracle Reprieve
- The Beginnings of the Bird Cage
- Frontier Colossus
