Wild West

Wild West Magazine presents the great American frontier from its beginnings to today

Wild West3 min read
Christie’s Gunfight
It’s the October issue, so naturally the thoughts of Wild West editors and longtime readers alike turn to the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. For those who’ve had their fill of Wyatt Earp, his brothers, Doc Holliday and that Oct. 26, 1881, shootout in a
Wild West3 min readCrime & Violence
Felonious Females
In R. Michael Wilson’s article “Felonious Female Nevadans” [August 2017]. he writes on P. 49, “In the roughly seven-decade history of the Wild West authorities in the Western states and territories executed just two women.” That number seems unrealis
Wild West6 min readAmerican Government
10 Movie Gunfights That Hit The Mark
1 Open Range: The gunplay, to quote Kevin Costner’s character Charley Waite, is “messy.” It takes more than one bullet to kill a man, and getting shot actually hurts. That said, Costner does fan off nearly a dozen shots from one six-shooter. 2 Ride t
Wild West3 min read
Events Of The West
The Buffalo Bill Center of the West (Cody, Wyo.) and the Gilcrease Museum (Tulsa, Okla.) have teamed up to present the exhibition “Albert Bierstadt: Witness to a Changing West,” which examines how the celebrated Western landscape artist also rendered
Wild West5 min readCrime & Violence
Double Murder At Roosevelt
In January 1907 William Baldwin, a 25-year-old black laborer, was helping to build the Theodore Roosevelt Dam on the Salt River in Gila County, Arizona Territory—a U.S. Bureau of Reclamation project. On the 31st, a day off for Baldwin, he appeared at
Wild West3 min read
It’s Not Rocket Science
Joe Jackson might not seem your typical Western historian. His father was a rocket scientist during the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs, and Jackson majored in English and psychology in college, then worked briefly as a suicide councilor before m
Wild West5 min read
From Adobe Walls To Durango
When buffalo herds in the vicinity of Dodge City, Kan., became so depleted hide hunters needed to venture ever farther from the railhead to find their quarry, it was Charlie Myers who decided to establish a trading post nearer the killing fields. Wit
Wild West2 min read
‘The New Face Of The Old West’
Late on an autumn afternoon in northern Montana five mounted Indians scout the banks of a watercourse in Riverwalkers, a 40-by-70-inch oil on linen by Colt Idol. The piece blends vibrant colors with a mood conveying just how vast and intimidating the
Wild West5 min read
Whistler’s Murder
The opening scene of the 1995 film Wild Bill, starring Jeff Bridges as James Butler Hickok and Ellen Barkin as Calamity Jane, depicts the famous frontiersman crossing paths with an Oglala Lakota named Whistler (Blackfeet actor Steve Reevis), who is m
Wild West4 min read
The Mark Twain Of Missouri Medicine
This particular 14-year-old boy, born on Dec. 21, 1839, in what became Vernon County, Missouri, had a strong appetite for knowledge. But in the rural 1850s heartland he found little in the way of formal book learning. To pursue an education, he left
Wild West12 min read
Gunfights Far From The O.k. Corral
Western gunfights were mostly spur-of-the-moment, one-on-one affairs, often fueled by a lethal mix of alcohol and indignation. Rarely did fair play enter into the equation. As one historian wrote, “Although there are documented examples of face-to-fa
Wild West3 min read
Style
TRAVEL The Mariposa Grove has reopened to Yosemite National Park [nps.gov/yose] visitors after a three-year, $40 million restoration initiative to protect the 4-acre grove of giant sequoias—some of which are more than 240 feet tall and 2,000 years ol
Wild West7 min read
Sing, Cowboy, Sing!
A silvery moon, a sleeping herd, a lonely cowboy riding night guard, crooning a soft cowboy song to soothe the cattle in the long hours before dawn. Such is the ingrained image of the singing cowboy, fixed in our collective imagination by a thousand
Wild West2 min read
Riders In The Sky
Keepers of the flame: That’s how three young men felt when they formed a Western harmony group in the fall of 1977. It was a mission, albeit one with a comic edge, for character-driven humor went hand in hand with soaring Western harmony from the sta
Wild West14 min read
Scalp Hunter
They buried “Old Man Kirker” in 1852 in northern California, not far from the low mountain pass that still bears his name. After the burial his Shawnee and Delaware Indian companions, who had lived and hunted with Kirker at Oak Springs for the past t
Wild West7 min read
Midnight In Old Mexico
In 1915 Arizona’s Bisbee Daily Review praised M.T. “Doc” Donovan as “one of the handiest men with a gun in the pioneer days.” During his lifetime he was most celebrated for a daring midnight raid into Mexico in 1885, but today most of Donovan’s explo
Wild West10 min read
The Gang’s All Here
Near noon on Jan. 8, 1874, five masked bandits swooped down on an eastbound stage some 3 miles west of Arcadia, Louisiana. While the robbers rifled through mailbags and the passengers’ pockets, the westbound coach of the Monroe & Shreveport Stage Lin
Wild West11 min readCrime & Violence
Long Quest For Revenge
The Reverend George Honey, pastor of the Methodist Church in Sterling, Kan., was returning from market the morning of Sept. 18, 1876, when he saw a man staggering up the street into town. “He was a horrible sight,” Honey noted. “His head and face wer
Wild West3 min read
As Big As All Wyoming
In 1900 Jim Gatchell opened a Buffalo, Wyo., drugstore naturally named the Buffalo Pharmacy. It quickly became the town’s social hub, drawing settlers, cowboys, cattle barons, Army scouts and lawmen. Gatchell was not only a respected businessman but
Wild West3 min read
The Pump Hits Its Prime
Christopher Miner Spencer, of Spencer repeating rifle and Spencer Arms Co. fame, brought to market the first commercially successful pump-action repeating shotgun in 1882, marking an end to the supremacy of the traditional double-barrel shotgun. Thou
Wild West12 min read
Must See, Must Read
(2014, by Larry D. Ball): This is the most thoroughly researched volume on the life and death of one of the West’s most enigmatic figures. Ball has done his homework on the sometime scout and controversial range detective, and no matter how steeped i
Wild West3 min read
Ophir, Utah
Credit for the origin of mining around Ophir, Utah, doesn’t rest with a prospector or miner. That honor goes to Brig. Gen. Patrick Edward Connor, the recognized “Father of Utah Mining.” Sent to the territory with his command in the winter of 1862–63,

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