Charlie Connelly was a teacher, first in Indiana and then in Kansas when he moved there in the 1880s. In 1892, he was looking for a little extra...
Charlie Connelly Cut Short
read more
mark boardman
Tulsa Jack
William Blake was better known by the handle “Tulsa Jack.” The cowboy went to the dark side in 1892 when he joined Bill Doolin’s gang. Over the...
Jim Parker’s Last Night
This much is known: Jim Parker was hanged in Prescott, AZ on June 3, 1898, for the murder of Assistant District Attorney Lee Norris during a...
Clay O’Brien Cooper
John Wayne thought Clay O’Brien Cooper was too small to play one of The Cowboys—until the pint-sized nine-year-old lassoed and dumped him on the...
Tom Horn’s Fatal Mistake?
Tom Horn was hanged for the murder of teenage Willie Nickell. The theory: Horn mistook the boy for his father, Kels. Kels Nickell was a hot-headed...
W.H.H. Llewellyn
W.H.H. Llewellyn was a major player in the West. In the late 1870s, he tracked down rustler Doc Middleton and his gang in Nebraska, Wyoming and the...
“Quick Shot” Scott Davis
They nicknamed Scott Davis “Quick Shot” because of his skill with weapons—especially over the 15 years he rode shotgun on stages in the Dakotas and...
The Toughest News in the West
The Old West was filled with colorful names—none more so than The Tombstone Epitaph, the oldest continuous newspaper in Arizona. Former Apache agent...
Millard Fillmore Leech
Millard Fillmore Leech had his moment of fame in September 1877. A clerk at a mercantile in Ogallala, Nebraska, when he sold some red bandanas to a...
Rockwell Paints for Stagecoach
In 1966, legendary American artist Norman Rockwell was hired for a special job—painting a series of portraits for a remake of the classic Western...
True Grit On Screen
True Grit, the 1968 Charles Portis novel about a dissolute deputy U.S. marshal and a precocious teenage girl, was made into movies on two occasions....
True West Treasure Hunters
If you look back at old True West issues—back in the ‘50s and ‘60s, when Joe “Hosstail” Small was ramrodding the outfit—you’ll see a lot of familiar...