The 1890s saw an epidemic of train robberies with 261 in that decade alone. Eighty-eight people were killed and eighty-six wounded. According...
The Heyday of Train Robberies
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true west blog
That’s Mr. Librarian to You!
Granville Stuart is known as “The Father of Montana.” And during his years there, he was a miner, built (and lost) a huge cattle operation, led...
A Fitting End for a Killer
Ed O’Kelley is known as the man who killed Robert Ford, who killed Jesse James in 1882. O’Kelley did nine years in the Colorado pen for that. But he...
El Tiradito
El Tiradito, is located in Tucson’s Barrio Viejo and is supposed to be the world’s only shrine for a sinner. There are many versions of how the...
“Died a Natural Death”
Miles Kellogg was a saloon owner and professional violinist in Tombstone in the early 1880s. The legends say that he was a passenger on the Bisbee...
A Forgotten Tombstone Pioneer
Samantha Fallon is one of those Tombstone characters who hasn’t gotten much attention. She arrived in town in 1879. She owned The San Jose House,...
Aftermath of the Tombstone Gunfight
It was just three days after three men died in Tombstone’s street fight behind the OK Corral. Ike Clanton—who had run from the battle—decided to...
Halloween and the Call of the Wild
There's an old folk story told in the mountains of Montana about a band of gray wolves that hunted relentlessly and remorselessly for human babies....
The Medal of Honor
The criterion for receiving the Medal of Honor, created in 1863, was quite different during the Indian Wars and Civil War period than it is today....
Lynching and Hanging
Recently, I a couple questions about lynch mobs in the old west hanging a man or men for a crime. When the lynch mob caught the man or men accused...
Horsethief Basin
Horsethief Basin, high in Arizona’s Bradshaw Mountains gets its name because rustlers used to steal horses in Mexico, central and southern Arizona,...
Revenge Begets Revenge
Ed Crawford was a policeman in Ellsworth, KS (photo) just after Billy Thompson accidentally killed Sheriff Chauncey Whitney in August 1877. ...