It sounds so romantic: An Apache violin is meant to lure a young woman to the young man playing it. This courtship tool, most effective in the...
The Apache Cupid
read more
Old West Saviors
Collecting American Outlaws
Growing up in Missouri in the 1930s, Wilbur Zink loved listening to family legends as he sat at the kitchen table. The one that most impressed him...
“Green” Ranching
Today, Sid Goodloe has a lush vista from his two-story ranch house. He can see for miles, looking at low hills and pine trees and thick grassland...
Keep Up the Fight
You can stand in some spots and feel “the power of the place.” “It’s what you feel when you stand in the ruts left by thousands of covered wagons,”...
Ghost Town King
Todd Underwood remembers standing next to his dad at an Arizona ghost town they’d discovered some 30-odd years ago and getting that marvelous...
The Sinagua Sunwatchers
When Kenneth J. Zoll and his wife Nancy retired to Sedona, Arizona, in 2004, Ken had never heard of “archaeoastronomy.” After all, he had spent 35...
Potawatomi Trail of Death
They were simply in the way, holding land that emigrating farmers wanted as their own. So the Potawatomi were rounded up and forced to leave their...
Nevada Territory’s Best
You have to go back some 146 years—back to the days of Nevada Territory—to hear the kind of bragging about the St. Charles hotel that is common...
A Good Enough Mine
The silver mine was good enough in 1878 to birth Tombstone, Arizona. And it was good enough in 2007 when the mine opened for public tours, bringing...
America’s Favorite Bone Detective
Alferd Packer has been called “America’s Favorite Cannibal.” Students at the University of Colorado at Boulder memorialized him by naming their...
New Kid on the Block
El Paso, Texas, is a city with a past—far more of a past than most communities in the West can claim. It’s belonged to three countries and has a...
Remember the Baca-Cowboy War?
For most of his life, Henry Martinez had no idea he was part of history. He grew up in the western New Mexico town of Reserve, population 336 today,...