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.

From Fort Laramie to Wounded Knee
From Fort Laramie to Wounded Knee

Author: Charles W. Allen

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2001-01-01

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 9780803259362

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The varied and colorful career of Charles Wesley Allen (1851-1942) took him throughout the northern Plains during an exceptionally turbulent era in its history. He was at the Red Cloud Agency when Red Cloud attempted to prevent the raising of the American flag and the Lakota nearly took over the agency. Allen also visited Deadwood at the height of the Black Hills gold rush, helped build the first government agency on the Pine Ridge reservation, and reported on the Lakota Ghost Dance. Allen happened to be walking through the Indian camp at Wounded Knee when shots rang out on December 29, 1890, and his is arguably the best of all the eyewitness accounts of that tragedy. ø This is Allen's previously unpublished vivid account of the years he described as "the most exciting chapter of my life." As much the chronicle of the passing of an era as a personal narrative, its simple, direct, and often moving prose captures the injustices, gritty details, and relentless energy of a period of dramatic change in the West.

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.

Tales of the Frontier
Tales of the Frontier

Author:

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 1971-06-01

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 9780803257443

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"Anyone in search of the spirit of the Old West will find it in this book. In fact, any student in college taking a course in the history of the West or even in a general history of the United States should be required to read Dick's book; and when once the student had sniffed its atmosphere, the required would no longer be necessary."--Georgia Historical Quarterly "An entertaining and comprehensive collection. . . . The reader is sure to put Dick's book down with a fresh realization of the vigor, adventure, humor, tragedy, and endeavor that went into the development of our western country."--Annals of Wyoming "A highly satisfactory and completely disarming approach to the history of the West."-- Utah Historical Quarterly "A delightful anthology of western Americana by that great collector of social history, Professor Everett Dick."--Social Education "A great book for those who enjoy the history of how our West was won"--The Western Horseman

Buffalo Bill's America
Buffalo Bill's America

Author: Louis S. Warren

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2007-12-18

Total Pages: 674

ISBN-13: 030742510X

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William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody was the most famous American of his age. He claimed to have worked for the Pony Express when only a boy and to have scouted for General George Custer. But what was his real story? And how did a frontiersman become a worldwide celebrity? In this prize-winning biography, acclaimed author Louis S. Warren explains not only how Cody exaggerated his real experience as an army scout and buffalo hunter, but also how that experience inspired him to create the gigantic, traveling spectacle known as Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. A dazzling mix of Indians, cowboys, and vaqueros, they performed on two continents for three decades, offering a surprisingly modern view of the United States and a remarkably democratic version of its history. This definitive biography reveals the genius of America’s greatest showman, and the startling history of the American West that drove him and his performers to the world stage.

The Bonanza Trail
The Bonanza Trail

Author: Muriel Sibell Wolle

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2018-03-12

Total Pages: 894

ISBN-13: 0253033314

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This classic account of Old West mining camps and gold-hunting prospectors is “a successful digging of a rich historical vein . . . phenomenal” (The New York Times). This colorful blend of history, reference, and travelogue brings to life the frenzied search for precious metals in nineteenth-century America through a tour of mining camps and former boomtowns, many now abandoned. It reveals the unbelievable privations men endured in the high Sierra and the Rockies and in crossing the desert wastes of Arizona, Utah and Nevada; the mines first discovered in New Mexico by Coronado and his men four centuries ago; and the first great rush that hit California in 1849. She follows the miners who poured in successive waves into the golden gulches of Oregon, Washington and Idaho, climbed to the deeper mines high in the mountains of Montana, Wyoming and Colorado, and dared at last to penetrate the hostile Black Hills of South Dakota. In personally following the trails of the pioneering prospectors, Wolle stumbles upon mute evidence of past bloodshed, lust, and struggle, and recreates the excitement of the period. A gifted artist, she also includes maps and “more than a hundred poignant sketches conveying the loneliness, melancholy and crumbling dryness of ghost cities which throbbed once with the hopes of many people” (The New York Times). “The fascinating and definitive book on the ghost and near-ghost towns of the Old West.” —Lucius Beebe, The Territorial Enterprise “Good popular history and [a] useful reference work.” —Library Journal