Wild West

Wild Bill Hickok bested Davis Tutt in a gunfight in Springfield, Missouri, on July 21, 1865. Anyone who has looked beyond Hollywood shootouts to delve into real Wild West history knows that dramatic confrontation was a rare one-on-one, face-to-face q

Chuck Lyons’ Western Enterprise story “Bothersome Blue Pebbles” [February 2019] is very interesting yet might benefit from some clarification. Hundreds of prospectors did not descend on Yogo Gulch in 1866. Rather, a small group of prospectors found p

1 Geronimo: The legendary Chiricahua Apache warrior’s grave (above) at Fort Sill’s Beef Creek Apache Cemetery, near Lawton, Okla., attracts many visitors, who place money and trinkets beside the stone pyramid marker. Since his February 1909 burial ru

This year marks the sesquicentennial of the 1869 completion of the world’s first transcontinental railroad. The Union Pacific Museum [uprrmuseum.org] in Council Bluffs, Iowa, is partnering with the Joslyn Art Museum [joslyn.org] in Omaha, Neb., on “T

“I must be the world’s luckiest historian,” says Will Bagley, 69, who is best known for monumental nonfiction books about the Mormon West and overland trails published by the University of Oklahoma Press. That may be, but the Salt Lake City–based aut

Born in Boston in 1851, Joseph Bevier “Rocky Mountain Joe” Sturtevant served in the Civil War and scouted in Dakota Territory during the Indian wars before settling in Boulder, Colorado Territory, in about 1874. There he married Swedish-born Anna Lyn

Although best known for his involvement in the second trial and sentencing of Jack McCall, the coward who killed Wild Bill Hickok (see related feature, P. 38), Judge Peter C. Shannon had many other notable adventures and accomplishments in his judici

On April 14, 1889, when Joseph Goldsborough Bruff died abed at age 84 in Washington, D.C., he left a valuable inheritance. Though he had been a Forty-Niner, he’d found no gold. He had, however, kept detailed journals and sketches far more valuable to

A study of medicine in the frontier West reveals Indians had notoriously weak immune systems. White trappers and fur traders who inter married with Indian women often mourned two or three wives, as those spared the scourge of smallpox might die of tu

Though historians and artists have generally overlooked black cowboys, Bill Pickett (1870–1932) certainly earned his share of attention. The subject of several biographies, the Texas-born cowboy, rodeo star, Wild West show performer and silent film a

PHOTOGRAPHY Pacific Northwest native Sean Hoyt [seanhoyt.com, @seanhoytart], who calls Seattle home, spent a decade in college pursuing math and science yet toward the end of his studies became enamored with photography and made it his fulltime caree

The summer of 1876 found famed gunfighter and lawman James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok in the goldfields of Dakota Territory. Hickok and partner Charlie Utter had arrived in Deadwood (in present-day South Dakota) that July and were working several area

In the wake of the Dec. 6–7, 1846, Battle of San Pasqual, demoralized Mexican troops dispersed into the countryside north of San Diego, California. Seated cross-legged around a fire at a Pauma rancheria some 40 miles northeast of town, one group of 1

The Southern Cheyenne warrior dreamed of a wolf, blood smeared on its muzzle, mourning over its slain and scattered pups. Interpreting the warrior’s vision as a sign “Indians would die,” Chief Black Kettle sent four of his children—including a daught

Oklahoma publisher Casey Paxton never imagined unearthing a hidden basement beneath the downtown office of his weekly newspaper, The Cheyenne Star. Yet, what he found there one summer day in 1987 left him far more shocked. On a tip from a prior resid

An hour’s drive southeast of Gallup, New Mexico, the high desert landscape comprises a largely flat savannah of prairie grass dotted with piñon and juniper trees. As you round one last bend and catch sight of the immense white sandstone bluff, you’ll

Few who knew him would dispute Granville Stuart was an extraordinary man. He lived several lifetimes in his 84 years, anticipating and paralleling the growth of Montana from an unsettled frontier to a territory and, finally, to the 41st state to ente

The 1860 discovery of gold along Orofino Creek within the northern borders of what would become Idaho Territory set off a mass migration to the area. While the California Gold Rush had begun more than a decade earlier, placer mining there was startin

Dr. Isaac Coates and Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer first met at Fort Riley, Kansas, at the outset of Major General Winfield Scott Hancock’s 1867 campaign against the Cheyennes—Custer’s introduction to the Indian wars. “The first thing I

At dawn on Nov. 27, 1868, along the banks of the Washita River in western Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer led 7th U.S. Cavalry troopers and Osage scouts against the Southern Cheyenne village of Chief Black Ke

Saturday morning TV Westerns of the 1950s—think The Lone Ranger, The Roy Rogers Show, Annie Oakley and The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin—created a huge demand for products kids could use or wear to imitate their small-screen heroes. At the top of kids’ w

Crystal is arguably Colorado’s most picturesque ghost town, due to the iconic Sheep Mountain Tunnel Mill powerhouse (aka Crystal Mill), among the most photographed historic structures in the state. That said, there’s a lot more to this hard-to-reach

(1976, by Angie Debo): Debo reveals the man behind the legend in this classic book. The legendary Oklahoma historian even interviewed some of the last living Fort Sill Apaches who personally knew Geronimo. The Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889 (1984, by Sta