Poker Alice

Poker Alice

The “Queen of the Western Gamblers” was Alice Ivers. She was both gambler and madam. She also had a religious side, closing her brothel on Sundays where she taught Sunday school lessons to her girls in the parlor where the other six days of the week were...
“¡No Tire en la Casa!”

“¡No Tire en la Casa!”

May 10, 1871 Tracking a party of rough hombres, Alameda County Sheriff Harry Morse and San Jose Deputy Theodore “Sam” Winchell approach a ranch house in California’s Saucelito Valley, near St. Mary’s Peak. Reining up outside a rock corral, they dismount and ask a...
Jack Swilling’s Arizona Adventures: Part II

Jack Swilling’s Arizona Adventures: Part II

For a brief time in early 1862 Confederate troops occupied what would soon become the Territory of Arizona. This was part of a grand Confederate plan to occupy New Mexico and open a path to California that would make the South an ocean to ocean power. The so-called...
The Wretched Newspaper War

The Wretched Newspaper War

A profit-making enterprise that ended up documenting history may make one’s stomach queasy—especially when a complete picture of how that happened is explored. An album of Wounded Knee photographs was both shocking in its hammer price ($22,000 at Cowan’s Auctions, on...