Cyclone Bill

Cyclone Bill

Bill Beck was a well-known character to the bartenders around Arizona. He’d studied law as a young man in Texas but didn’t practice long. No sooner than he opened an office the court assigned him to defend a cow thief who had no money. The thief took one look at him...
The Birth of a Wicked Son Reimagined

The Birth of a Wicked Son Reimagined

Notorious gunfighter John Wesley Hardin was in the midst of writing about the bloody career surrounding his life story when lawman John Selman killed him at the Acme Saloon in El Paso, Texas, on the night of August 19, 1895. John’s children inherited his estate, which...
The Baca Float #5

The Baca Float #5

  Bob Sharp who managed the Baca Float from 1937 to 1952 wrote: “The Baca Float was one of the last big outfits to run under the code of the old time ranchers, a code which respected the knowledge of the men on the payroll.  When I first took over the ranch in...
Riders of the Purple Sage

Riders of the Purple Sage

Thank the Grand Canyon. Long before it was a national park—before it was even a game preserve, thanks to President Teddy Roosevelt—this steep-sided canyon of grandeur inspired one of the greatest storytellers of the American West. He was a writer who touched hundreds...
The Chisholm Trail

The Chisholm Trail

150 Years of Trail History The Texas cattle-trailing industry lasted only fifty years. From Texas statehood in 1846 until 1897, Texas drovers trailed over 12 million longhorns out of their state to mining camps, to Confederate enclaves, to railheads, to northern...