Patrick Wayne was only 11 when he got to visit his father on a movie set for the first time. The film was “Rio Grande,” directed by John Ford, set...
Patrick Wayne
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true west blog
A Fateful Game of Cards
A strange card game decided the fate of six Apache warriors, captured by U.S. troops in southwest Arizona in 1861. Lt. Isaiah Moore and Asst....
Chief Mangas Coloradas
In early 1861, the great Apache Chief Mangas Coloradas went to a mining camp at Santa Rita in New Mexico. He was going to tell the miners of richer...
Bandit Queen Belle Starr
Myra Maybelle Shirley, was another Old West personality who might have been forgotten had she not been reinvented by a novelist. The so-called...
Charles Poston
Charles Poston was several years away from being “The Father of Arizona” when he met with Apache leader Mangas Coloradas in southeast New Mexico in...
Old West Prisons Were No Place for Sissies
Rules For Inmates at the Wyoming Territorial Prison: Rules for Inmates: You will not be allowed to converse with each other on any subject...
The Lucky Cuss Mine
The story of rags-to-riches prospector Ed Schieffelin and his Lucky Cuss Mine is one of Arizona’s greatest Horatio Algier success stories. In 1877,...
Cyclone Bill
Bill Beck was a well-known character to the bartenders around Arizona. He’d studied law as a young man in Texas but didn’t practice long. No sooner...
“Granite Face of Destiny”
Clint Eastwood was not the first choice to play “The Man With No Name” in the Sergio Leone Spaghetti Westerns. The director tried to hire Charles...
The Luck of the Irish
The saying “luck of the Irish” was virtually born in the West. Consider: Jimmy Doyle, Jimmy Burns, and Johnny Harnan, who made their fortunes at...
Outlaw Henry Starr
If I had to pick an outlaw who literally “rode tall in the saddle,” I would have to go with Indian Territory Cherokee outlaw, Henry Starr, who at...
When Lawmen Got It Wrong
A gunfight outside Blackwell, Oklahoma just proved that lawmen didn’t always get the right man. Outlaws Ben Craven and Dick Ainsley had been casing...