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Life In A Soddy
When the farmers got west of the 100th meridian they found themselves in short grass country where the grasses were gramma, needle and buffalo. The annual rainfall at 10-20 inches was more than half...
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Who Really “Tamed” The West?
History has lots of candidates, from trappers to explorers to miners, military men, ranchers, homesteaders, even gunslingers. But you seldom hear this: “Though history has all but forgotten them, it...
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Spring is in the Air
What do Tombstone, the Pony Express, an “anti-dude” club and Jesse James have in common? All made history during the month of April. For Tombstone, it started on the very first day of the month, for...
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Rescuing Silver Strike History
During mine tours, Julie and Al Lucero present the history of the mule barn and mules associated with the Sutro Tunnel from mid- to late 1800s. An engineering achievement in Comstock history, the...
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No Way to Stage a Hanging
One place nobody wanted to be on April 25, 1901, was the front rows of spectators at the New Mexico hanging of Black Jack Ketchum. Ketchum was a notorious outlaw and feared gunman, but he was an...
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How Prevalent Were Bounty Hunters?
How prevalent were bounty hunters? Tom Betts Anaheim, California In 1872, the Supreme Court ruled that bounty hunters were a part of law enforcement. Bounty hunters had more leeway when pursuing a...
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Gourmet Glitz at Gateway to the West
Virginia Campbell provided meals to many dignitaries, from President Ulysses S. Grant to Gen. William T. Sherman, in this dining room at her family home in St. Louis, Missouri.– Courtesy Campbell House...
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True Westerner: Lee Anderson, Equine Historian
A retired aerospace engineer living in Waddell, Arizona, Lee Anderson has spent more than 60 years studying equine training methods and traditions of the Spanish Colonial vaqueros of 1750-1800, the...
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Did Augustine Chacon Kill 52 Men?
Did Augustine Chacon kill 52 men? Jonathan Smith Rodenberg, Lower Saxony, Germany The number of men Augustine Chacon killed is disputed, just as the death kills are for John Wesley Hardin, Bill...
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A Preacher Comes to Helldorado: Part I
During the early days of life in Tombstone the main diversion was playing cards but that soon changed as the business district developed. Folks drank, gambled, frequented bordellos, lied, bragged and...
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A Preacher Comes to Helldorado: Part II
C.S. Fly’s photo of a 19th-century baseball team in Tombstone, Arizona. – Courtesy Arizona Historical Society / Tucson AHS #17867 – Among the Reverend Endicott Peabody’s friends in Tombstone was Wyatt...
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A Preacher Comes to Helldorado: Part III
Endicott Peabody’s grandson Endicott “Chub” Peabody graduated from Harvard in 1942. He was an All-American defensive lineman for Harvard and was later inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame....
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Charlie Connelly Cut Short
Charlie Connelly was a teacher, first in Indiana and then in Kansas when he moved there in the 1880s. In 1892, he was looking for a little extra work during vacations. So he became town marshal of...
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Marion Hedgepeth Crosses Tracks with Serial Killer H.H. Holmes
Marion Hedgepeth (left) and H.H. Holmes (right). Old West train robber Marion Hedgepeth helped unmask serial killer H.H. Holmes. The two were in a Missouri jail and came up with a con scheme: Holmes...
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Finding the Great Canyon On the Gila River
Until recently, the location recorded in this 1851 field sketch (left) in surveyor Amiel Whipple’s diary was unknown. Seth Eastman based his circa 1853 watercolor (center) on the field sketch. A study...
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Belle Starr: The Bandit Queen
Gene Tierney as Belle Starr Sometimes an outlaw had to die before he or she gained fame. Myra Belle Shirley is a good example. She grew up in an affluent Southern family, was well-educated,...
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Racism Can Get Ya Killed
Downtown El Paso, circa 1890. RACISM CAN GET YA KILLED: That’s the message to misguided cowboys George Campbell and John Hale (who also was a drunken bully.) It’s all part of the legacy of the Battle...
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Lucky Cuss
The tall, lanky prospector brushed back his thick, matted, unkempt hair and looked out across a jumble of high mesa hills, scanning the rough terrain on the east side of the San Pedro River. Somewhere...
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Joseph Lee Heywood, a Northfield Hero
Joseph Lee Heywood Joseph Lee Heywood is considered the hero of Northfield, MN, the man who bluffed the James-Younger Gang out of emptying the First National Bank of its cash in the 1876 robbery...
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Gunman Barney Riggs
Barney Riggs Barney Riggs was a gunman of note, with a number of killings in the Southwest to his name between 1874 and 1902. In 1886, he killed Richard Hudson, who had been bragging about an affair...
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