You could hear the two shots all over Lincoln, New Mexico: noon, April 28. The date is historic: on that day in 1881, history tells us Billy the Kid...
From Shovels to DNA
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History Features
The Bell Tolls For Bell
By dying from Billy the Kid’s hands on April 28, 1881, Deputy Sheriffs James W. Bell and Robert Olinger stoked Billy’s legend to a white hot flame....
Truth Failed To Hide In A Tin
When his hired hand stomped off in a huff that chilled November day in 1895, foreman Jim Potts knew it would be up to him to take care of his band...
“If they’re hungry, let them eat grass”
When you think of the savagery of the Old West, Minnesota doesn’t leap to mind. Montana, yes; South Dakota, yes; Arizona, yes, but not a Midwestern...
What were They Reading and Singing?
• Mary Shelley’s forever popular monster story, Frankenstein, was published in 1818. • The timeless classic, “Home Sweet Home” was first sung in...
Did Brigham Young Order a Massacre?
On September 11, 1857, 120 men, women and children—pioneers from Arkansas headed for California—were massacred after being promised safe passage...
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”...
The Pony Express
America was exploding in the mid-1800s. From coast to coast, it was a time of great anxiety—the Civil War was looming, the Mexican War was waging,...
Rendezvous
Before the Oregon Trail, before the cattle drives, before Wild Bill Hickok and Wyatt Earp, fur trappers—mountain men—opened the West. In their...
Everybody Hates Me!
Terry “Ike” Clanton, 44, is proud of his outlaw relatives. He thinks they got a raw deal at the so-called O.K. Corral gunfight. And he thinks Ike is...
Have Bar Will Travel
If it could talk, what stories this old bar could tell. Wyatt Earp himself likely dispensed beer, wine and spirits from behind its mahogany facade...
The Long Arm of the Law
Enforcing the law in the early West was a vocation for stout, fearless men. And yet there were at least three who extended the long arm of the law...