Irish immigrant Thomas Fitzpatrick signed on with William Ashley to head out West in search of beaver in 1823. He traveled up the Missouri River,...
Following Thomas “Broken Hand” Fitzpatrick
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Renegade Roads
Pikes Peak or Bust Trail
Sitting in historic Lawrence, I don’t know why those fortune seekers of 1859 ever left Kansas. There’s gold right here, and it’s delicious, as I...
Following the Wild Bunch
Members of the Wild Bunch Gang hopscotched across one isolated region to another where they found refuge from lawmen and posses once they had pulled...
Stutterin’ Across Jimmy Stewart Country
Crawling along the freeway in Los Angeles, I’m moving about as fast as Jimmy Stewart talked. James Maitland Stewart would have celebrated his 100th...
Following Jack Slade’s Stagecoach Trail
“A high and efficient servant of the Overland, an outlaw among outlaws and yet their relentless scourge, Slade was at once the most bloody, the most...
Tom Horn: Competent and a Killer
Incompetence is not a word to associate with Tom Horn, for from his teenage years until his death, he more than once proved he was the opposite. Of...
Tramping Through Our National Parks With John Muir
Tourists that spend their money to see rocks and falls are fools,” a shepherd told John Muir in 1869 during Muir’s fabled First Summer in the...
Forting Up On the Apache Trail
Ominous clouds threaten rain as I pull off Highway 80 near the Arizona-New Mexico border at the Skeleton Canyon monument. I debate whether or not I...
A Feast Along the Alferd Packer Trail
He was a shoemaker, Army veteran, hunter, guide, scout, miner, convict, harness maker, cane carver, horsehair braider, “jack whacker” and, of...
Northern Pacific’s Peaks and Valleys
St. Paul, Fargo, Jamestown, Bismarck, Glendive, Billings, Livingston, Bozeman, Missoula, Sandpoint, Spokane, Yakima, Tacoma. These are some of the...
On the Trail of Sheriff Pat Garrett
I have to use the bathroom. More information than you need to know, but be warned: Nature’s Call can be troublesome in this part of the country....
(Not Really) Roughing It on the Mark Twain Trail
By jingo, does everybody in Hannibal, Missouri, think he’s Mark Twain—the driver on the tour bus, the guide at the Mark Twain Cave, even Mark Twain...