A steadfast champion of his people during the wars with encroaching Anglo-Americans, the Apache chief Victorio deserves as much attention as his better-known contemporaries Cochise and Geronimo. In pr
As president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Utah’s first territorial governor, Brigham Young (1801–77) shaped a religion, a migration, and the American West. He led
An unvarnished picture of one of the West’s most complex charactersMountain man and fur trader Jedediah Smith casts a heroic shadow. He was the first Anglo-American to travel overland to California vi
Everyone knows the name Calamity Jane. Scores of dime novels and movie and TV Westerns have portrayed this original Wild West woman as an adventuresome, gun-toting hellion. Although Calamity Jane has
History has portrayed Christopher "Kit" Carson in black and white. Best known as a nineteenth-century frontier hero, he has been represented more recently as an Indian killer responsible for the death
Charles Goodnight was a rancher and a pioneer of the early range cattle industry in Texas. This biography, the first in 70 years, looks at the role of ranching in the development of the Texas Panhandl
In this biography, Hunner (history, New Mexico State U.), whose father worked with atomic bombs in New Mexico, explores how the West influenced J. Robert Oppenheimer as a scientist and person and how
Bret Harte was the best-known and highest paid writer in America in the early 1870s, yet his vexed attempts to earn a living by his pen led to the failure of his marriage and, in 1878, his departure f
The historical Isaac C. Parker (1838?1898) has been overshadowed by his legend--the notorious ?hanging judge” of the Wild West. In his time as district court judge, he did sentence over 160 people to
Nearly a century after John Muir’s death, his works remain in print, his name is familiar, and his thought is much with us. How Muir’s life made him a leader and brought him insights destined to reson
Few who appreciate the visual arts or the American Southwest can behold the masterpieces Sangre de Cristo Mountains or Haystack, Taos Valley, 1927 or Bend in the River, 1941 and come away without a vi
In 1922, the teenage son of a Jewish immigrant ventured from Manhattan to New Mexico for his health. It was the first of many trips to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, a western retreat where J. Robert
Westerns are rarely only about the West. From the works of James Fenimore Cooper to Gary Cooper, stories set in the American West have served as vehicles for topical commentary. More than any other pi
With a widowed mother and six siblings, Annie Oakley first became a trapper, hunter, and sharpshooter simply to put food on the table. Yet her genius with the gun eventually led to her stardom in Buff
