Residents of Cave Creek revere the town’s frontier beginnings and love the way it blends with the bohemian present. The two combine to make a...
True West’s Hometown
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Leo W. Banks
Fort Smith, Arkansas: Where the Old West Begins
Isaac C. Parker did a lot to make the frontier settlement of Fort Smith famous, and all these years later, the so-called hanging judge might as well...
Virginia City, Nevada: Queen of the Comstock
In its boom days in the early 1860s, Virginia City, Nevada, “royally roosted” midway up the steep slope of Mount Davidson, a boomtown visible from...
Cold-Blooded Conman
Perhaps the most cold-blooded conman early Arizona ever knew, Louis Eytinge suffered from tuberculosis and had two months to live. He should’ve died...
Big Horn Getaway: Buffalo, Wyoming
Few towns are more thoroughly Western than Buffalo, Wyoming, and isn’t the name perfect? It conjures images of the great beasts roaming the plains,...
Top 10 True Western Towns of 2018
Americans are lucky. When life gets tough, we have hope of finding something better, a land of redemption beyond the next horizon. That’s how we...
The Bayou City
In August of 1836, brothers Augustus and John Allen created a new town they hoped would be the “great interior commercial emporium of Texas.” They...
Building Your Western Library With Leo W. Banks
As a youngster, Leo W. Banks watched too many TV and movie Westerns. The summer before entering Boston College High School, the Jesuits sent out a...
Cowboys and Conductors
The northern Arizona town of Williams got off to a fast start after its founding in 1881. With the arrival of the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad...
Gambling, Gold and Women
Deadwood has always attracted big names. In 1874, even before the town’s creation, George Armstrong Custer and his command scouted the Black Hills...
“To Honor Men Who Dig For Gold”
Ghost Towns of the West (Voyager Press, $24.99) by Philip Varney and Jim Hinckley, is a must for lovers of history and solitude. The book features...
Gateway to the West
Located on a plateau above the west bank of the Missouri River and its confluence with the Platte River, Omaha has always been a good spot for...