Her owner planned to take her from California to slave-holding Texas, so Biddy Mason went to court. After a dangerous drama, she won her freedom.
William Cody established his reputation during a celebrated clash with Yellow Hair.
With five major exploring expeditions west of the Mississippi, John C. Frémont redefined the country — with the help of his wife’s promotional skills.
Interest in the outlaw has grown recently with the discovery of the first authenticated photographs of Henry McCarty, who died at the age of 21 after a short, notorious life of gambling and gunfights.
A historian looks at the distinctive Midwestern identity of Wilder and her "Little House on the Prairie" books.
They created towns and became the center of Western life, enabling wheat, cattle, and minerals to flow out of the West
Although it ran only briefly 150 years ago, the Pony Express still defines our understanding of the Old West
The creator of the immensely popular new Western discusses what makes it truly new.
There have never been many of them, and they haven’t always behaved well. But for more than a century now, they’ve been one of the most famous law-enforcement out fits in the world.
From law officer to murderer to Hollywood consultant: the strange career of a man who became myth
The legend of the most famous of all outlaws belongs to the whole world now. But to find the grinning teen-ager who gave rise to it, you must visit the New Mexico landscape where he lived his short life.
THE MOVIES, THE WARS, AND THE TEAPOT DOME
A journey of a hundred miles on a Wyoming interstate turns up the true stories behind the powerful Western myths
From Fort Ticonderoga to the Plaza Hotel, from Appomattox Courthouse to Bugsy Siegel’s weird rose garden in Las Vegas, the present-day scene is enriched by knowledge of the American past
The Lone Star state as it once was—proud, isolated, independent, the undiluted essence of America forever inventing itself out of the hardscrabble reality of the frontier
The Wyoming photographer Joseph Stimson proudly portrayed his region in the years when it was emerging from rude frontier beginnings
The Photographic Record of a Western Success Story
To Owen Wister, the unlikely inventor of the cowboy legend, the trail rider was a survivor from the Middle Ages – “the last cavalier,” savior of the Anglo-Saxon race
Piskiou,Vaches Sauvages, Buffler, Prairie Beeves—
Images of the Maritime West
The Colonial Status—Past and Present—of the Great American West
Organizers held an old-fashioned cattle drive to commemorate the cowboy's role in winning the West, but, as they say, nostalgia ain't what it used to be.
Western miners, the hard-rock stiffs, were as tough and horny-handed a breed of men as any in the world.
For hoboes, the West was the land of milk and honey, of adventure, scenery, and easy living. A “land stowaway” hopped the first transcontinental train, and for six more decades they rode the rails
In painting the romance of the American cowboy, Remington knew instinctively what would grip his audience and held it fast.
“Then how come they’re digging a grave behind the old corral, Luke?”