Reading the pulp westerns and watching B-westerns one might conclude that the Colt revolver was the only pistol used in the Old West. Remington...
Six-Shooters
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true west blog
Tombstone’s Night Life
The most imposing and best known in theater in Tombstone was Schieffelin Hall, inspired by the town founder. For two decades it was the largest...
The Escalante
There’s nothing left to show for it today, but one time the Escalante in Ash Fork, Arizona was billed as the best Harvey House west of Chicago. The...
Doc Holliday’s First Killing?
On July 19, 1879 in Las Vegas, New Mexico a drunk Mike Gordon—either because of a problem with a girl or bad luck at the gaming tables—started...
John Wayne: “Bigger Than Life”
One might assume John Wayne and William F. Cody had little in common besides their Iowa origins and international fame as actors. Unlike Cody,...
The Deadly Dade Massacre
The Dade Massacre is almost forgotten in the annals of the U.S.-Indian wars—but it was one of the deadliest in army history. On December 28, 1835—at...
The Deadly Dade Massacre
Bob Sharp, who managed the 257,000-acre Baca Float from 1937 to 1952 wrote in his Big Outfit: Ranching on the Baca Float, “The Baca Float was one of...
The Tombstone Doctor
Dr. George Goodfellow is best known as the physician who treated Morgan and Virgil Earp after the OK Corral gunfight. He was a close friend of the...
Frontier Dentistry
I’ve often said “The good old days really weren’t all that good.” Professor Joanna Bourke wrote “Agonizing toothache, horrifying extractions and...
An Arizona Outlaw
Fleming “James” Parker was a career criminal, primarily a rustler, but in 1897, he took a step up to train robbery near Peach Springs, Arizona. It...
The Bald Knobbers
The Bald Knobbers were a pro-Union vigilante group that emerged in the southwest region of Missouri in the 1880s. The area had been virtually...
The Steadfast Seminole
The Indian Removal Act of 1830 led to the forced relocation of thousands of Indians from their native areas to reservations, primarily in what’s now...