Old West History

Billy the Kid once said that he killed 22 men - one for each year that he lived. While it’s more likely that he only killed eight or nine, this young outlaw was clearly deadly. But his brief and brutal life reveals how his tragic existence led him into a life of crime. After growing up in poverty as an Irish immigrant in New York City and losing his father at a young age, Billy the Kid had to endure losing his mother when he was only 15.

WILL ROGERS MEDALLION AWARD winner! RED RIVER RIFLES, from Amazon bestselling author Dorothy Wiley, continues the highly-acclaimed Wyllie family saga. Kicking off her new Wilderness Dawning—the Texas Wyllie Brothers Series, this remarkable novel is set in a time and place when life was tough. And love had to be even tougher. In 1818, the bravest of the brave settled a narrow strip of land along the Red River in Texas. A place where death and life held equal strongholds—the new leading edge of the West was an exceedingly dangerous place. For Samuel Wyllie, his family’s land south of ...

Ten-year-old Daniel Waterford and his family join a wagon train heading for Oregon, a grueling experience for the hardiest of people and a boring one for a young boy. The journey is fraught with peril for Daniel, but by the time they arrived in Trinity, their new home, Daniel has aged far beyond his years. Travel with Daniel as he faces unimaginable challenges, and experience the Wild West as it really way, not the way movies and popular TV has led us to believe.

LAND OF STARS, from Amazon bestselling author Dorothy Wiley, continues the highly-acclaimed Wyllie family frontier saga. It’s now 1824, and the Province of Texas, an exceedingly dangerous and volatile place, is the leading edge of the West and is seized by Mexico from Spain. Blending action and romance with vigilant research, Wiley brings to life the generations of driven men and women who shaped Texas—all of them a part of the creation of a place that became not just a nation, not just a state, but an enduring dream. Steve Wyllie, a young man with the courage and grit to confront the ...

In old age, Charlie Siringo was called "Ulysses of the Wild West" for the long journey he took across the western frontier. Son of the Old West brings him and his legendary world vividly to life.

This collection of short, action-filled stories of the Old West's most egregiously badly behaved female outlaws, gamblers, soiled doves, and other wicked women offers a glimpse into the Western women's experience that's less sunbonnets and more six-shooters. During the late 1800s, while men were settling the new frontier and rushing off to the latest boomtowns, women of easy virtue found wicked lives west of the Mississippi when they followed fortune hunters seeking gold and land in an unsettled territory.

Settlers in the frontier West were often easy prey for criminals. Policing efforts were scattered at best and often amounted to vigilante retaliation. To create a semblance of order, freelance enforcers of the law known as man-hunters undertook the search for fugitives. These pursuers have often been portrayed as ruthless bounty hunters, no better than the felons they pursued. Robert K. DeArment's detailed account of their careers redeems their reputations and reveals the truth behind their fascinating legends.

Within this audiobook, the listener will meet a 19-year-old Texas Ranger figuratively dying to shoot his gun. He does get to shoot at people, but soon realizes what he thought was a bargain, exacted a steep price. Another tale is of an old-school cowman who shut down illicit traffic in stolen livestock that had existed for years on the Llano Estacado. He was tough, salty, and had no quarter for cow thieves, or sympathy for any mealy-mouthed politicians. He cleaned house, maybe not too nicely, but he was unarguably successful.

Love and happiness -- The only thing Blanche Tyler has ever wanted is to marry the man of her dreams. It finally has happened. Almost immediately, her world is shattered when her husband, Rye Tyler, is captured by his most hated enemy - the Sioux. Rye Tyler knew this could be the end once he rode into the Powder River country. Isabelle was dying and he wasn’t sure if Blanche would love him anymore. Their last parting ended on a sour note. The only two people that he cared about in his life he had disappointed once more. Rye Tyler knew he was on the road to hell. Will Rye survive or will ...

Some of the greatest hounds in the southwest match wits, courage, and endurance with the elusive cougar, bear, and wildcat. New Mexico and Arizona have produced some truly exceptional hounds and houndsmen over the years, and the Slash Ranch hounds were among the best. Over much of the first half of the 1900’s these hounds with Dub Evans were making a name for themselves all over the southwest. People coming from far and wide to witness them in action as well as for the chance to harvest bear and lion. The Black Range and Gila Wilderness of New Mexico where much of this book takes place, ...

WILL ROGERS MEDALLION AWARD FINALIST 2021 Part action-adventure, part suspense, part heartfelt romance—and always a page-turner—Wiley’s newest addition to the Wilderness Dawning Series, BUCKSKIN ANGEL, is an intense journey back to the thrilling birth of the West. It’s 1824, and Captain Sam Wyllie and Bear MacKay, well-loved characters from the American Wilderness Series, agree they need one last adventure—a thrilling 800-mile journey through the American frontier to see their brother Stephen in the Province of Texas. Knowing that predators of all kinds lurk in the wilderness, ...

The culmination of a lifetime of hound-dogging and hunting of the big cats in an action packed year of adventure on the famous Vermejo Park Ranch in northern New Mexico. The pages of When the Dogs Bark "Treed" vividly reflect the author’s love for wildlife and for wild places. It is a portrayal of a conservationist and administrator of wildlife resources who came up the hard way. It, incidentally, presents a vast store of information about game and predators and their environment which the author has gleaned from long years of firsthand contacts. Only the pioneer who helped blaze the ...

OUTLAWS AND LEGENDS OF THE WILD WEST - SPECIAL 15 STORY BOX SET Do you like true stories of the Wild West? You should love these tales of outlaws and gunslingers then Of course you will have heard of most of them as many have become infamous legends. Some are not so quite well known however, but they were all dangerous and ruthless criminals and all had their "15 minutes of fame", leaving trails of death and mayhem behind them. Most did not live to an old age, and those that did were probably in jail. Their escapades were daring and reckless and many paid the ultimate price in the end. ...

Among the legendary heroes and outlaws of the Wild West, few names echo louder than that of Wild Bill Hickok. Wild Bill wasn’t just a name whispered in saloons or shouted on the stage of Buffalo Bill’s world-famous Wild West shows. Long before he stepped onto any stage, Wild Bill had carved his path in blood, sweat, and gunpowder. He was a Civil War scout who could read the vast plains like a map, a fearless marshal who faced down lawlessness, and a frontier sheriff whose very name sent ripples through the towns he protected.

In the 1850s, the United States was a nation divided. In the North, industrialization and urbanization were both significant drivers of change. In the South, a largely agrarian economy was supported by the institution of slavery. The East and West of the country were also divided, not by social or political differences but by a vast tract of largely untouched, rugged, and often hostile territory. There were just two ways to travel from the East Coast to the Pacific Coast or vice versa.

WESTERN WRITERS OF AMERICA FINALIST 2022 KINDLE BOOK REVIEW AWARDS SEMI-FINALISTCan sparks of the heart ignite amid the battle that flamed the epic struggle for Texas? In 1824, ten years before the Texas Revolution, the province of Texas belonged to Mexico—but not for long. Texians would soon rebel against the oppression of the Mexican commandant. In a land that grew heroes from those with courageous and daring hearts, this heart-jolting historical romance is the fourth novel in the Wilderness Dawning Series and features Wiley’s popular and well-loved characters, the Wyllies and MacKays...

What if the Western world does not have its ultimate origins in a single cultural bloodline but rather a messy bramble of ancestors and influences? As battles over privilege, identity and prejudice rock the cultural wars, it's never been more important to understand how the concept of The West came to be. This book tells a bold, empowering new story of how the idea of the West was created, how it has been used to justify imperialism and racism, and also why it's still a powerful ideological tool to understand our world.

A Minneapolis Reporter follows the boyhood dream to see Where Goes The River. On Memorial Day, 1925, he embarked from the headwaters of the Mississippi River-Lake Itasca, and spent the next 105 days on the river, becoming the first person to have made the complete 2500-mile journey by canoe. Averaging nearly 30 miles per day Tousley and his three separate companions, endured the elements and enjoyed the mighty grandeur of the river in the only way that one can truly experience it. . . by canoe. A 17-foot wood and canvas beauty named Charles H. Curly of St. Paul their canoe bore the brunt of...

In the year 1850, an adolescent Filipina girl is captured by marauding pirates and tossed into a whirlpool of turmoil. Emerging from her misfortune, she finds herself bravely traversing from Hawaii to The Cascade Mountains and onward into the American Old West. By chance, she stumbles upon a treasure of gold extracted by Chinese miners,and hidden before the Chelan Chinese Massacre.. Fate and her quest to return to the Philippines push her onward. Saddle your horse and hang on as you follow her down the path of her adventure! The trail is laced with actual historical events and Native ...

Here is a story which combines the rugged adventure of big game hunting in Texas and little-known facts of wildlife with the factual account of the work of one of Texas’ outstanding outdoorsmen. Texas Lion Hunter is not a biography in the usual sense — it is the exciting account of a man pitting his methodical sureness and knowledge of the Texas wilds against the cunning and deadliness of the predators which range the Texas cattle land. From the time John E. Hearn learns to use his first rifle till the time he tracks down his most elusive ‘‘headlighter.” that two-legged predator ...