I was reading 'Good Little Bad Man', the story of Colorado Charley Utter. It was noted that Charley had the habit, thought odd at the time, of...
Hygiene In The West Saturday night bath?
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Cowboy
Cigars, Pipes And Cigarettes Did cowboys prefer to smoke cigarettes, pipes, or cigars, when out on the trail?
Cigarettes and cigars have been around for a long time. Prior to the Civil War cigars ranked next to chewing tobacco in popularity. They were...
What History Has Taught Me: Tom Russell
Tom Russell, Singer-Songwriter, Author, Artist.
Birth Of The Cowboy “He only got off his horse to dance or to die...”
The original cowboys as we know them today, were the Mexican vaqueros. From Texas to California these superbly skilled horsemen could ride and rope...
Roll The Bones A black cowboy and a key archaeological find.
George McJunkin was a black cowboy who began riding the ranges at the end of the Civil War—when he was 14-years old. He was self-taught in reading...
Whiskey In The Old West A lot of whiskey was consumed. There was good whiskey and there was bad. Or, as some would say, “It was all good, but some was better.”
A True West recently asked, “My wife and I watch western movies all of the time. We have noticed that there is a lot of whiskey drinking in all of...
The Righteous Road Harry Saxon went a different way than his infamous kinsman.
Harry Saxon was the nephew of Cochise County Cowboy Wes Fuller—but he took an entirely different path in life. In 1903, at the age of 21, Saxon was...
The Real Lonesome Dove
Thirty-five years after Larry McMurtry’s visionary novel was published, it still inspires our love of Old West History.
George Turnbull Cline In a family that produced some of the best cowboys that ever sat a saddle, one man achieved legendary status...
They used to say if you could hold a job cowboying in the Tonto Basin you could cowboy anywhere in the West. In 1874, the Christian Christopher...
Empire Ranch In time the Empire became one of the largest cattle operations in the entire Southwest. At the height of operations, the ranch was running 50,000...
Cattle were first introduced to the land that would become the Empire Ranch back in 1699 when the legendary Jesuit padre Father Eusebio Kino brought...
Western Saddles The western style saddle goes back to the Crusades and earlier...
The biggest difference between the western saddle and eastern is the horn. The saddle horn was essential for roping open range cattle during roundup...
Will C. Barnes: Soldier, Cowboy, Author and Storyteller
Will C. Barnes was born in San Francisco on June 21st, 1858. After moving across country and living in numerous states, he settled in Washington,...