Charles Ray liked to hang out with bad guys. Going by the name Pony Diehl (or Deal), he first gained notice as a member of the John Kinney and...
Pony Diehl
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true west blog
Dry Diggins
Back in 1848, the year it was founded, the California town was called “Dry Diggins” because of the gold mining efforts nearby. That lasted about a...
The Brief And Violent Life Of Cherokee Bill
Crawford Goldsby, aka "Cherokee Bill", was born February 8th, 1876 at Fort Concho, Texas. He was the son of George Goldsby, a sergeant in the 10th...
James Bailey Of The Barnum and Bailey Circus
James Bailey is probably the least known of the founders of the soon to close Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus. An orphan born in...
Yes, They Were Romantic
If history does not offer evidence to support the notion that Billy the Kid and Paulita Maxwell had a relationship, it also does not offer evidence...
To The Last Man
In the aftermath, of Arizona’s Tewksbury-Graham War Tom Graham, the last of the fighting Graham’s got married and settled down in Tempe. But feuds...
Pleasant Valley War
Feuds usually occurred in remote places and fighting flared when the law was unavailable, unable or unwilling to intervene. Conflicts usually...
Attracted To Bad: Laura Bullion
You might say Laura Bullion was a girlfriend of outlaws. She grew up in Knickerbocker, Texas and knew locals like Ben Kilpatrick and Will Carver of...
The Murder Steer
For many years Texas folklorist J. Frank Dobie regaled his students with Texas history at the University of Texas at Austin. He was a prolific...
Tangled Webs: The Wild Bunch and Their Women
Separating fact from fiction when it came to some members of the Wild Bunch and their women got downright confusing because of the stories handed...
Pete Kitchen
In a sense, Pete Kitchen represented Arizona’s transition from lawless frontier to civilization. In 1861, the U. S. Army was withdrawn from Arizona...
America’s Second Amendment City
Tombstone officials have decided to add another nickname to “The Town Too Tough To Die.” They recently passed a resolution calling the place...