The Cheyenne and Black Hills Stage and Express Routes (Abridged, Annotated)

The Cheyenne and Black Hills Stage and Express Routes (Abridged, Annotated)

Author: Agnes Wright Spring

Publisher:

Published: 2016-11-05

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 9781519043474

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More thrilling than any Wild West film, this is the true story of the drivers and operators of the Cheyenne and Black Hills stage coach company. During one of the most important periods of the history of Wyoming, Montana, and the Dakotas, brave men and intrepid passengers faced harsh weather, bad roads, Indians, and a seemingly endless parade of desperate "road agents" (robbers).Masterfully researched and written by Wyoming's State Historian in 1949, no fan of the Old West will want to miss this classic work. It is full of humorous and painful stories, as well as a look into a world long gone.Famous western characters like Buffalo Bill, Wild Bill Hickok, Judge William L. Kuykendall, Lonesome Charley Reynolds, General George Crook, and George Armstrong Custer were all part of the time and place.Every memoir of the American West provides us with another view of the westward migration that changed the country forever.


Assault on the Deadwood Stage

Assault on the Deadwood Stage

Author: Robert K. DeArment

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2012-02-27

Total Pages: 437

ISBN-13: 0806184698

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In the 1870s, Deadwood was a thriving—and largely lawless—boomtown. And as any fan of western history and films knows, stagecoach robberies were a regular feature of life in this fabled region of Dakota Territory. Now, for the first time, Robert K. DeArment tells the story of the "good guys and bad guys" behind these violent crimes: the road agents who wreaked havoc on Deadwood's roadways and the shotgun messengers who battled to protect stagecoach passengers and their valuable cargo. DeArment shows in dramatic detail how for two years gangs of robbers ruled the road, perpetrating holdups and killings, until lawmen and stage-company and railroad agents finally brought an end to the mayhem. The characters populating this violent tale include such legendary figures as Wild Bill Hickok and the famous railroad detective James L. "Whispering" Smith, a formidable opponent of bandits. We also get to know the men who operated the stages, the lawmen and company men who ran and defended the coaches, and the outlaws who fought against them. DeArment tells where these men came from and what became of them after the outlawry ended. He ends his account in the 1880s with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show and its spectacular rendition of a shotgun robbery, featuring an actual Deadwood stagecoach. After nearly a century and a half, the Deadwood stage continues to command our attention.


Deadwood

Deadwood

Author: Watson Parker

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 1981-01-01

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 9780803236004

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Chronicles Deadwood, South Dakota, a typical American frontier and gold rush town, especially the volatile years 1875-1925.


Great White Fathers

Great White Fathers

Author: John Taliaferro

Publisher: Public Affairs

Published: 2007-10-09

Total Pages: 478

ISBN-13: 158648611X

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Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor of Mount Rushmore National Memorial, hoped that ten thousand years from now, when archaeologists came upon the four sixty-foot presidential heads carved in the Black Hills of South Dakota, they would have a clear and graphic understanding of American civilization. Borglum, the child of Mormon polygamists, had an almost Ahab-like obsession with Colossalism--a scale that matched his ego and the era. He learned how to be a celebrity from Auguste Rodin; how to be a political bully from Teddy Roosevelt. He ran with the Ku Klux Klan and mingled with the rich and famous from Wall Street to Washington. Mount Rushmore was to be his crowning achievement, the newest wonder of the world, the greatest piece of public art since Phidias carved the Parthenon. But like so many episodes in the saga of the American West, what began as a personal dream had to be bailed out by the federal government, a compromise that nearly drove Borglum mad. Nor in the end could he control how his masterpiece would be received. Nor its devastating impact on the Lakota Sioux and the remote Black Hills of South Dakota. Great White Fathers is at once the biography of a man and the biography of a place, told through travelogue, interviews, and investigation of the unusual records that one odd American visionary left behind. It proves that the best American stories are not simple; they are complex and contradictory, at times humorous, at other times tragic.


Man-Hunters of the Old West

Man-Hunters of the Old West

Author: Robert K. DeArment

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2017-04-06

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 0806158107

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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. As DeArment shows, man-hunters were far more likely to capture felons alive than their popular image suggests. Although “Wanted: Dead or Alive” reward notices were posted during this period, they were reserved for the most murderous desperadoes. Man-hunters also came from a variety of backgrounds in the East and the West: of the eight men whose stories DeArment tells, one began as an officer for an express company, and another was the head of an organization of local lawmen. Others included a railroad detective, a Texas Ranger, a Pinkerton operative, and a shotgun messenger for a stagecoach line. All were tough survivors, living through gunshot wounds, snakebites, disease, buffalo stampedes, and every other hazard of life in the Wild West. They also crossed paths with famous criminals and sheriffs, from John Wesley Hardin and Sam Bass to Wyatt Earp, Butch Cassidy, and the Sundance Kid. Telling the true stories of famous men who risked their lives to bring western outlaws to justice, Man-Hunters of the Old West dispels long-held myths of their cold-blooded vigilantism and brings fresh nuance to the lives and legends that made the West wild.


Fort Meade and the Black Hills

Fort Meade and the Black Hills

Author: Robert Lee

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 1991-05-01

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9780803279612

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Fort Meade was the home of the famous Seventh Cavalry after its ignominious defeat in the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Troops from Fort Meade played a pivotal role in the events that led to the tragedy at Wounded Knee in 1890. It was the scene of imprisonment of Ute Indians who made the mistake of interpreting their new citizenship status as freedom from government control. The fort survived the mechanization of the horse cavalry, aided the record-breaking Stratosphere Balloon flight of 1935, and became a training site for the nation’s first airborne troops. Fort Meade existed for sixty-six years, from 1878 to 1944. Robert Lee examines the strategic importance of its location on the northern edge of the Black Hills and the role it played in the settlement of the region, as well as the role played by the citizens of Sturgis in keeping it alive. One of the chief delights of Fort Meade and the Black Hills is a gallery of characters including the unfortunate Major Marcus Reno, the beautiful and fatal Ella Sturgis, and the cigar-smoking Poker Alice Tubbs. They, and events scaled to their larger-than-life size, are part of this long overdue story of Fort Meade.