While young Navajo men were away, secretly helping win the war as Code Talkers with their unbreakable code, hundreds of Navajo Women also did their...
Navajo Women Helped the War Effort, Too
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Saying Goodbye to an American Hero
By now, most know the fabulous story of the Navajo Code Talkers—young Navajo men who joined the Marines during World War II and were sent to the...
The Women on the Mother Road
It was John Steinbeck who first named Route 66 the “Mother Road”--all 2,400 miles of it from Chicago to Los Angeles. But it was thousands of...
The Walk Down
It was the most famous stroll in American history. Neither fast nor slow. Purposeful, with a sense of intimidation. It has been memorialized on film...
The ‘Perfesser’
True West’s staff recently received news from Brian Dervin Dillon, Ph.D., that his father, Richard H. Dillon, renowned, award-winning Western...
Roses So Sweet They Remember
Arizona has found a particularly sweet way to commemorate its pioneer women—the Territorial Women's Rose Garden at the Sharlot Hall Museum in...
Raining Bricks and Shooting Citizens
In 1906, San Francisco, was one of the jewels of the American West. The California boomtown of the 1850s had grown into the ninth largest city in...
Mountain Charley
Ever wondered how hard it was to be a woman in the Old West? Just ask Mountain Charley. Or should we say, Elsa Jane, a teenaged widow with two...
A Photo has Always Been Worth a Thousand Words
A photo has always been worth a thousand words and that is perhaps no where more pertinent than in the Old West. We have but a few images of some...
Preserving Polygamy
Preserving Polygamy became a women's campaign in the late 1800s—a point that will surprise many, who assumed women hated the plural-wife dictate of...
Their Name Lives On
It started with one Pima basket, bought in the late 1890s somewhere around Phoenix, Arizona. Newcomers to the Southwest—health seekers—found the...
The First Woman to “Despise” Polygamy
The first woman to “despise” polygamy was Emma Smith—the first wife of Mormon founder Joseph Smith. Historians note she never believed it was a...