Motor Trend

2 min read

The Oregon Trail gets all the attention, but far more Americans emigrated on the lesser-known California Trail headed toward what would become the Golden State. Many wealthier Eastern Americans traveled by sailing around Cape Horn to San Francisco. T

Los Angeles Times

3 min read

"This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption are Ruining the American West" by Christopher Ketcham; Viking (430 pages, $29) ___ Once great, wide and untrammeled, the American West, where wolves roamed in gray multitudes and sage grouse puffed

American History

1 min read

In Dreams, H.W. Brands seats the reader in canoes and prairie schooners among the stalwarts who explored and settled the American West. In powerfully evocative prose, the best-selling author of Traitor to His Class and The Age of Gold tells how Ameri

Los Angeles Times

4 min read

Whether they are densely populated or deeply rural, few communities in the United States have escaped a shocking run-up in suicides over the past two decades. From 1999 to 2016, suicide claimed the lives of 453,577 adults between the ages of 25 and 6

Wild West

1 min read

Highly regarded California historian and author William Boyd Secrest, 89, a lifelong resident of Fresno who specialized in writing about the outlaws, lawmen and Indians of his home state, died on May 8, 2019. Born on March 14, 1930, Secrest served wi

The Knot Weddings Magazine

1 min read

WE’LL GIVE YOU ONE GUESS AS TO WHICH REGISTRY STAPLE WE’VE WRAPPED UP. HINT THE SOUTH ASKS FOR IT THE MOST. CONNECTICUT / DELAWARE / MAINE / MARYLAND / MASSACHUSETTS / NEW HAMPSHIRE / NEW JERSEY / NEW YORK / PENNSYLVANIA / RHODE ISLAND / VERMONT / VI

Wild West

5 min read

On a spring trapping expedition in 1833 Kit Carson and five handpicked men were en route to the southwest corner of what would become Colorado when set upon by 200 Comanches. With no chance of escape, the trappers drew their knives, slit the throats

NPR

3 min read

An imaginary map line dividing East and West illustrates a climate boundary that has influenced how and where people live and work. Its eastward shift could predict changes in farming and ranching.

NPR

4 min read

Maxim Loskutoff's collection of short stories picks at the tensions between city and country among everyday Westerners — who find themselves living among heavily-armed separatist militias.

The Saturday Evening Post

6 min read

At about 10:30 a.m. on the mor n i ng of August 3, 1901, more than 100,000 people jostled to catch a glimpse of Frederick Cummins’ Indian Congress parade at the Pan-American Exhibition in Buffalo, New York. The crowds shrieked with excitement when th

Guernica Magazine

3 min read

Reconsidering the origin stories and mythologies of Los Angeles, Texas, Arizona, the Alamo, and a family. The post New Series: Rewriting the West appeared first on Guernica.

The Journal of the Texas Trophy Hunters

2 min read

I doubt that anyone today notices the state of Oklahoma is shaped like a frying pan, with a long handle that touches New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas and Texas, and the rest of Oklahoma. How this long 34- by 166-mile handle came to be is intriguing, to s

Wild West

3 min read

The Little Snake Valley, one of Wyoming’s best-kept secrets, may be on the road to nowhere but is well worth a stop, in no small part because of the Little Snake River Museum, in Savery. American Indians, explorers, trappers, miners and cattlemen all

Wild West

3 min read

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

The Atlantic

9 min read

In America’s first climate war, John Wesley Powell tried to prevent the overdevelopment that led to environmental devastation.

NPR

7 min read

As I finish up my tenure as NPR's Public Editor, I've been looking back over some of the persistent themes that have run through the audience concerns I've heard. One in particular has come up routinely. Broadly speaking, many in NPR's nationwide aud

Shooting Times & Country

1 min read

The bison is regarded as the most iconic animal of the Wild West. Its population in the late 18th century was estimated at more than 60million. A century of slaughter later and the population had collapsed to 541 and extinction beckoned. Fortunately,

Wild West

1 min read

Texas author Jerry Lobdill (left) has earned the Wild West History Association’s Six-Shooter Award for best general Western article for “How Jim Miller Killed Pat Garrett,” which ran in the August 2018 issue of Wild West. Connecting the dots between

Wild West

1 min read

Colonel George Washington Miller, a Kentucky-born Confederate veteran, founded the 101 Ranch in Indian Territory (present-day north central Oklahoma) in 1893. After his death in 1903, his sons Joseph, Zachary and George Jr. took over operation of the

National Park Journal

1 min read

Before the faces of four U.S. presidents were carved into Mount Rushmore, this mountain was called The Six Grandfathers by the Lakota Sioux. For generations, it drew many Great Plains tribes as a sacred place. In 1868, the U.S. government gave Lakota

Motorcycle Classics

1 min read

What: Sand Creek National Historic Site, 55411 County Rd W, Eads, Colorado, 81036. (719) 438-5916. How to Get There: Take I-70 east from Denver, grab U.S. Highway 287 south, and then watch for the sign in Eads. It’s about a three-hour ride, and the l

Los Angeles Times

3 min read

WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump has laid the blame for out-of-control California wildfires on the state's "gross mismanagement" of its forests. Former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke pointed the finger at "environmental terrorist groups." But accor

TIME

2 min read

THE STORY OF CARBON COUNTY, WYOMING, CAN BE TOLD in its name. The 8,000-sq.-mi. jurisdiction first appeared on the map—figuratively and literally—in the 1860s along with the development of its vast coal reserve. That energy source, the black gold of

National Park Journal

1 min read

EL PASO, TEXAS, TO GRAND TETON AND YELLOWSTONE AND BACK From the high plains of New Mexico to horses galloping on Wyoming’s dude ranches, our Lone-Star Cowboy Route takes you to the heart of cowboy country. From El Paso, Texas, head to New Mexico to

Cobblestone

2 min read

The West—and how people resettled it—is central to America’s story. After the Revolutionary War (1775–1783), the new states agreed to give back to the federal government some of their claimed land. Much of that land, which stretched from areas west o

Wild West

1 min read

Born in 1860 in Haddonfield, N.J., rancher and performer William Tatem Collings was variously billed as Uncle Will, the Professor and Buckskin Charley. In the 1880s he started a 1,400-acre ranch outside Beaver City, Neb., and by 1890 was shipping hor

Futurity

3 min read

As the climate warms, the dry southern regions of the Western United States will have less groundwater recharge while the northern regions will have more, researchers report. “Our study asked what will be the effect of climate change on groundwater r

Wild West

1 min read

Thomas Edward “Black Jack” Ketchum was the more infamous train robber, but older brother Samuel Wesley Ketchum held his own, criminally speaking, until July 16, 1899. That’s when lawmen ambushed the Ketchum gang (minus Black Jack) at Turkey Creek Can

Wild West

3 min read

Dating from 1858, the redbrick building at 914 Penn St. in St. Joseph, Missouri, is listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places—and for good reason. It once housed horses at the starting point of the legendary Pony Express mail service. T

Futurity

3 min read

In many cases, the massive wildfires that burned in California, Oregon, Montana, Idaho, British Columbia, and other parts of North America in 2017 exhibited a disturbing trend: a marked increase in the amount of area burned. That trend will continue