One wild spring night in 1859, with a late season blizzard blowing in the mountains, a half-dead, red-headed man stumbled into a saloon in Golden, Colorado. The regulars and visitors ignored him, since the talk that night was all about the placer gold discovered by George Jackson in the sands of South Clear Creek. Little [...]

The Mexican gray wolf once roamed Mexico and the southwestern U.S. by the thousands. Their soaring song could be heard echoing through the dry washes and ringing across the rugged mountain tops. Towards the turn of the century, however, high cattle stocking rates and declining populations of native prey, such as deer and elk, caused [...]

{openx:8}”In the early pioneering days, the Southwest frequently gave birth to some very strange and unusual laws, lawmen, judges and other trappings of justice. In part, these laws were put in places due to the dangers of travel in rough country, extreme weather conditions, unfriendly natives, wild animals and to the rough characters who were [...]

Not all the characters who were important in shaping the West were men. In one rare instance, a lady of great charm and distinction gave the spirit of the West a voice. Sharlot Hall was a poet, historian and journalist, who rose from humble beginnings, and was the first woman to hold a post in [...]

{openx:8}The Southwest U.S. is rife with tall tales and legend of lost gold mines, lost treasures, stagecoach and bank robberies and more. One such tale begins in the small community of Castle Gate, Utah. In 1897, the Pleasant Valley Coal Company was shipping its payroll in by rail. On that April day, three cowboys were [...]

{openx:8}The Southwest U.S. is a harsh place — with unpredictable weather conditions, lack of water and food and harsh terrain. It frequently drove men and women to extreme lengths to survive. Perhaps the most famous of these survival stories comes from the wagon train that has come to be known as the Donner Party. Unfortunately [...]

{openx:8}No symbol or legend in the American Southwest is as powerful as that of the cowboy. The cowboy is the quintessential American hero; the embodiment of rugged individualism and independence. Their lonely songs drifted across the range at night to clam the herds. Their faces, weathered by sun and wind, wrinkled and gap-toothed, grin at [...]

{openx:8}Unlike the fictional monsters of the Southwest, the Gila Monster (pronounced HEE-la) is the real thing. Gila Monsters are heavy, slow moving lizards up to 2 feet long that prefers desert terrain. They are the only venomous lizard native to the United States, and are named for the Gila River which flows through New Mexico [...]

Imagine a ruggedly handsome stranger, wearing a white cowboy hat, a clean western shirt and chaps. He’s just saved the town from bunch of bank robbers in an amazing shootout. He mounts his white horse and rides off into the sunset with a hearty Hi Ho, Silver, and Away! That’s our romantic image of the [...]

Some of the Southwest’s more famous characters got famous, not by way of rich gold, silver and copper mines like Ed Schieffelin who struck the famous or infamous (depending on your point of view) Tombstone Silver Lode or by being eccentric like Doc Holiday. No, some of them become legendary because they were the first. John [...]