“Clubfoot” George Lane got the nickname because of a bone deformity. In the early 1860s, he allegedly rustled horses in California and Idaho before...
Lane by a Foot
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true west blog
A Law Career Begins
Virgil Earp’s entry into law enforcement was unexpected. It was in Prescott, Arizona Territory on October 16, 1877; he was talking with two local...
Billy the Kid and Jesse Evans
The question comes up: Did Jesse Evans and Billy the Kid ever have it out? They didn’t really “have it out” but they rode together briefly and...
A Short and Not-So-Sweet Career
Oliver Yantis was not the most successful outlaw. He was one of the first members of the Bill Doolin Gang. Just a week after Doolin’s former...
Friends unto Death
William Collins was an associate of Sam Bass, and a member of the Joel Collins (his brother) Gang (photo) that held up a Nebraska train of $60,000...
A Lawman pays the Price
Early in 1901, Yuma (AZ) Constable H.H. Alexander was sent to serve papers on local farmer J.J. Burns. Instead, the lawman shot and killed Burns’...
The Massacres at Skeleton and Guadalupe Canyons
After Mexico increased taxes on alcohol and tobacco in the late 1870s, smuggling became big business. Mexican smugglers exchanged silver and gold...
The Rangers Ride In
In the 1880s, a vigilante group organized in San Saba, TX, to take on criminal elements. The so-called “Buzzard’s Water Hole” assembly soon got out...
Taking the Law in their own Hands
The Anti-Horse Thief Association (AHTA) helped combat crime in many U.S. states and territories, mostly in the 19th Century. They were not a...
Hanging
A few years ago I received a question about the science of hanging and whether or not there was such a thing as a “traveling hangman.” The mythical...
Which Outlaw Gang got away with the most Loot?
There is so much discrepancy in the dollar figures in these robberies. Authors disagree by tens of thousands of dollars on the amounts taken. I...
The Horse Returns to North America
The end of the Pleistocene epoch, a geological period spanning roughly 2.5 million to 12,000 years ago brought about climate change to animals in...