“A lazy person should never think about going to Oregon,” wrote Elizabeth Wood, in her diary entry for August 3, 1851. Elizabeth was traveling on...
The Lazy Person’s Guide to Oregon
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Travel Feature
The Road to Mangas
The dirt road to Mangas almost loses itself amid low hills as it winds through the windswept plains of New Mexico’s high desert. It isn’t a drive...
Staycations & Vacations
This past winter, when I finally made my way to Mystery Castle at 800 E. Mineral Road in Phoenix, Arizona, I was glad to hear I was not the only...
Alaska’s Quiet Gold Rush
He said his name was Tommy. In his 60s, he had driven his compact pickup truck from Mississippi all the way to Alaska. Arriving in Homer, he spent...
Wagon Train Rediscovers America
The discovery of gold in 1874 by Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer’s expedition ignited a stampede. Mining camps sprang up in the Dakota Territory’s...
What’s in a Name
GENE AUTRY If not for his job as a telegrapher at the St. Louis and San Francisco Railway, Gene Autry may not have become famous as the Singing...
Phantom Rides Still Rollin’
The floor swings beneath your feet. Steam whistles toot. Train wheels clatter over the rail joints of a track. Your body rocks in the train...
The West’s Best Saloons
I’m sitting in some waterin’ hole with Sherry Monahan. She’s the popular historian, author of Tombstone’s Treasure and The Wicked West, a woman with...
I Will Kidnap No More Forever
Tourists had been sojourning in Yellowstone National Park each summer since just after its establishment in 1872. They kept coming during the summer...
Great Secrets of Our National Parks
Through blowing snow, a pair of cowboys rode across the top of a mesa, searching for stray cattle. Quaker rancher Richard Wetherill and his...
Trophy Hunting in Yellowstone
A journey along the “Grand Loop” of Yellowstone National Park in the late 1800s was a true adventure. An elite traveling public toured from five to...
Golly, What a Gully!
Theodore (“Don’t call me Teddy!”) Roosevelt earned lasting fame by charging up a Cuban hill in 1898. His greatest legacy in this country might be a...