Jim Melikian was window shopping. Normally, the 61-year-old Arizona businessman scoured auction catalogs for items he’s been collecting since he...
The Tombstone Collector
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Old West Saviors
A Stone Sentinel Stands Tall Again
Seven feet tall. Ten inches square. Eight hundred pounds. Once, 720 of them. Every half-mile from Minnesota to Montana. Standing since 1891 or...
Crown City’s Old Vistas
Box after box of photos. Day after day. One image more fabulous than the next. Photographer Todd Stands thought he knew a lot about “Coronado...
A Clear Path to a Clear Fork Post
Jim Alexander has always liked November. It’s his birth month—he turns 82 on November 7—and he shares the month with the focus of his life’s work,...
No Place Like Home
Tomasita Duran could not believe what was right before her eyes. On that day in 2004, the director of the housing authority saw something special...
Crusade for a Chief
He resembled George Washington and helped save Gen. George Crook’s men at the Battle of the Rosebud during the Great Sioux War of 1876—this Shoshone...
Hometown Visionaries
The “Wizard of Oz” taught that you don’t have to go far from home to find your dream. Donna and John Sickles know what that means, and Saint Jo,...
Singing for His Supper
Cy Scarborough’s heart never was in the “Natural State,” even though he was born and raised in Arkansas 85 years ago. “As a kid, I dreamed of going...
Supersized in San Antonio
Texans don’t call San Antonio’s Witte Museum the “people’s museum” to be folksy. Unlike many museums that come into being with a nice endowment from...
Hoop Dance Dynasty
Thanks to the pull of love, one of today’s most acclaimed hoop dancing families in the nation helped to revive the native dance that had all but...
Keeping New Mexico’s Pueblo Culture Alive
The Phillips family always loved their annual summer trip to Santa Fe from their California home in the 1950s and ’60s. In the Hopi land of northern...
Cuchillo Crusader
A family of wild turkeys is to thank for Josh Bond and his heroic efforts to save an abandoned town almost everyone has overlooked. It was 14 years...