Remembering Chief Joseph
September 21 marks the anniversary of the death of Chief Joseph, one of the most famous Native-American chiefs during the period of our nation’s decades-long “Indian Wars” in the second half of...
Remembering Charles Crocker
“Robber Barons.” Americans have used this phrase for over a century to describe the late 19thand early 20th century men who were instrumental in the financing of America’s industrial and...
Remembering Crazy Horse
The history of the American West is, in many respects, a history of conquest, as American settlers in the 1800’s migrated west into the lands of various Native-American tribes. Following the...
Remembering William Clark
Last month we posted a story about Meriwether Lewis, the famed explorer who co-led the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804-06. The other leader of that expedition was William Clark, who died on this...
The California Gold Rush: The 175th Anniversary Of The “49’ers,” And California’s First Constitutional Convention, September 1849
The story of the American West is a story of emigration—hundreds of thousands of pioneers heading West, originally to areas west of the Mississippi River, and later to areas west of the Rockies,...
Commemorating the 200th Anniversary of the Birth of Meriwether Lewis
Commemorating the 200th Anniversary of the Birth of Lewis In the history of the American West (by which I mean west of the Mississippi), two events arguably were the starting point for the western...
Remembering Annie Oakley
On this day in 1860, folk heroine Annie Oakley was born in a log cabin in Illinois. By age 8 she was demonstrating her extraordinary sharp-shooting skills, and at age 15 she began a long career as...
Remembering Wild Bill
Yesterday we commemorated the death of Calamity Jane, the colorful “partner” of Wild Bill Hickok, who died on August 1, 1903. Today, we commemorate the death of Wild Bill himself, who died...
Remembering Calamity Jane
On this day in 1903, one of the most famous female characters in the history of the American West died in South Dakota at the young age of 51. “Calamity Jane” was born Martha Jane Canary in 1852....
Remembering Samuel Colt: Inventor, Industrialist, and Architect of the Revolver Era
Samuel Colt, born on this day, July 19, 1814, in Hartford, Connecticut, was a visionary inventor and industrialist whose name became synonymous with the revolver—a repeating firearm that forever...