Wild West

This year marks 35 years Wild West has been “Chronicling the American Frontier,” as it once read on the cover. It was back in June 1988 that editor Bill Vogt steered the premiere issue into print, and from Vogt’s untimely death in 1995 to 2022 editor

I was grateful the cover of your Autumn 2022 Wild West labeled part of your magazine’s contents as “Tales of Billy the Kid.” The issue’s assortment of articles about and around the character of Billy the Kid contained a delicious stewpot of facts, as

William and Charles Bent partnered with Ceran St. Vrain in the best known trading post west of the Mississippi. Established in 1833 on the Santa Fe Trail in what today is southeastern Colorado, Bent’s Fort was a gathering spot for travelers, trappers

On March 3, 2023, amid anniversary observations for the 1836 Battle of the Alamo, the historic site in San Antonio will open a two-story exhibition hall and collections building—the first building of an ongoing redevelopment plan and the newest since

The Founders Museum in Barre, Mass., recently returned some 150 culturally significant artifacts, several with reported ties to the 1890 Wounded Knee battle turned massacre, to Oglala Sioux and Cheyenne representatives of South Dakota’s Pine Ridge an

Western Writers of America has chosen prolific Oglala/Sicangu Lakota writer Joseph M. Marshall III as its 2023 Owen Wister Award honoree for lifetime contributions to Western literature. It will present him with the award—a bronze bison by artist Rob

The WILD WEST HISTORY ASSOCIATION is dedicated to providing publications and forums for the enlightenment and enjoyment of anyone interested in Wild West history, facilitating and encouraging research, study, writing, presentation, and preservation o

“Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery” is showing at the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture in Santa Fe through May 29, 2023, and will get plenty more exposure in years to come, including stops at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (July 13

On March 22, 1881, convicted murderer Big Nose George Parott, having filed the rivets off his shackles with a smuggled pocketknife, tried to escape from the Carbon County Jail in Rawlins, Wyo. After striking jailer Bob Rankin over the head, however,

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The three Russians were acquaintances. Two were recent immigrants, while the third had been in North America for a time. Hard labor in the copper mines of Butte, Mont., had not fulfilled their idea of the “American Dream.” There had to be an easier w

By life’s end Sarah Creath McSherry Hibbins Stinnett Howard could claim five surnames, one from her birth and one each from her four husbands. Along the way she had suffered more hardship on the Texas frontier than most pioneers, man or woman. Descri

A handful of mischievous cowboys are enjoying a night on the town, setting off firecrackers beneath a packer’s horses outside a saloon, in Gary Lynn Roberts’ 36-by-50-inch oil on canvas Charlie and the Pranksters. Roberts describes the scene as “a ni

On Oct. 9, 1904, amid production on the film The Hold Up of the Leadville Stage (or Robbery of the Leadville Stage), a real shootout occurred. The crew and some two dozen cast members were filming the climactic holdup scene in the foothills of Colora

ANDREW JACKSON SURVIVED AN ASSASSINATION ATEMPT WHILE ATTENDING A FUNERAL AT THE U.S. CAPITOL. UNEMPLOYED HOUSE PAINTER RICHARD LAWRENCE TWICE TOOK AIM AT JACKSON, MISFIRING BOTH TIMES. IN RESPONSE JACKSON THRASHED HIM WITH HIS CANE. THE CROWD, WHICH

The Cheyenne hunter’s horse kicked clods of earth skyward as the warrior drove hard alongside the buffalo. Within seconds the experienced hunter let fly several well-placed arrows into the flanks of the charging beast. The shafts sank deep, piercing

Frontier relics William James Cannon and Louis C. Schilling shared much in common. Each roamed the American West, attracted or sought the attention of newspaper reporters, loved to talk, had a shadowy past, had a hand in killing at least once as a pr

In October 1907 U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt set out on a hunting trip in the northern Louisiana canebrake country near Tensas Bayou. There was nothing particularly remarkable about the president’s love of “manly sport” with rifle. He was among

Brigido Guerrero’s story of survival at the Alamo is surely thrilling. But is it true? In the fall of 1878, more than four decades after the Battle of the Alamo, Guerrero applied for a pension with officials in Bexar County, Texas, swearing in writin

William James “Uncle Jimmy” Cannon always wanted to be a hero, and in his travels across the West he represented himself as an Alamo survivor, a decorated Mexican War veteran and an indispensable frontier scout. But his headline-grabbing fantasy life

For nearly a decade after the Civil War southwest Texas was a land in torment. Emboldened Indians striking from below the Rio Grande stole tens of thousands of head of livestock, burned out countless ranches and murdered scores of settlers. Many such

Thomas James Smith, better known as “Bear River Tom” Smith, is remembered primarily for having preceded the legendary Wild Bill Hickok as marshal of Abilene, Kan. Smith’s stint in office ran just shy of five months, from June 4 to Nov. 2, 1870. He pr

Such an exciting event as the raid into Mexico surely couldn’t escape the notice of Hollywood script writers. Sure enough, in 1958–59 Colonel Mackenzie and his men again rode forth in the syndicated Western television series Mackenzie’s Raiders. Rich

New York Bar, a sandbar on the Snake River some 20 miles north of present-day Dayton, Wash., is a place of hauntingly stark geological formations carved during the ancient Missoula floods. The Snake winds west from its headwaters in Wyoming’s Yellows

Ridgway, a town of just over 1,000 souls along the Uncompahgre River in southwest Colorado’s San Juan Mountains, is rooted in railroad history. The townsite was established in 1890 by business partners Otto Mears and Fred Walsen at the northern termi

In the summer of 1887 five prospectors were exploring Spring Gulch (present-day Keystone Creek), a southwesterly flowing stream from Keystone Mountain to the Missoula River (today known as the Clark Fork) in Montana Territory. A few miles upstream th

The undated image at right of a buffalo hunter and his latest prize in the Lamar Valley of Yellowstone National Park confirms a reality unthinkable to most present-day visitors—that hunting of this iconic American animal was once permitted within par