Renegade Roads
Journey Through Spanish Missions Country
- Published March 01, 2009
- Written by Johnny D. Boggs
Tourists—tons of them—walk inside these walls with a quiet reverence.
Following Thomas "Broken Hand" Fitzpatrick
- Published February 01, 2009
- Written by Candy Moulton
Irish immigrant Thomas Fitzpatrick signed on with William Ashley to head out West in search of beaver in 1823.
Northern Pacific's Peaks and Valleys
- Published March 01, 2008
- Written by Candy Moulton
St. Paul, Fargo, Jamestown, Bismarck, Glendive, Billings, Livingston, Bozeman, Missoula, Sandpoint, Spokane, Yakima, Tacoma. These are some of the largest towns in the Northern Plains and Northwest, all either spawned—or given a growth hormone—by the construction of the Northern Pacific Railway that went into service 125 years ago.
Pikes Peak Or Bust
- Published January 01, 2009
- Written by Johnny D. Boggs
Sitting in historic Lawrence, I don’t know why those fortune seekers of 1859 ever left Kansas.
On the Trail of Sheriff Pat Garrett
- Published January 01, 2008
- Written by Johnny D. Boggs
I have to use the bathroom.
Following the Wild Bunch
- Published November 01, 2008
- Written by Candy Moulton
Members of the Wild Bunch Gang hopscotched across one isolated region to another where they found refuge from lawmen and posses once they had pulled off a job—whether it was robbing a bank or a railroad payroll.
(Not Really) Roughing It on the Mark Twain Trail
- Published November 01, 2007
- Written by Johnny D Boggs
By jingo, does everybody in Hannibal, Missouri, think he’s Mark Twain—the driver on the tour bus, the guide at the Mark Twain Cave, even Mark Twain Himself?
Stutterin' Across Jimmy Stewart Country
- Published October 01, 2008
- Written by Johnny D. Boggs
Crawling along the freeway in Los Angeles, I’m moving about as fast as Jimmy Stewart talked.
John Colter’s Favorite Mistake
- Published October 01, 2007
- Written by Candy Moulton
Screeching and yelling “like so many devils,” the Blackfeet grabbed at the driftwood raft hovering above the swimming naked man.
Following Jack Slade's Stagecoach Trail
- Published September 01, 2008
- Written by Candy Moulton
“A high and efficient servant of the Overland, an outlaw among outlaws and yet their relentless scourge, Slade was at once the most bloody, the most dangerous and the most valuable citizen that inhabited the savage fastnesses of the mountains.
—Roughing It, Mark Twain
Following 19th-Century Ute Trails
- Published September 01, 2007
- Written by Candy Moulton
Nathan Meeker raised a crop of distrust, anger and resentment among the Utes that led to disaster.
Tom Horn: Competent and a Killer
- Published August 01, 2008
- Written by Candy Moulton
Incompetence is not a word to associate with Tom Horn, for from his teenage years until his death, he more than once proved he was the opposite. Of course, the area in which he showed the most competence (and for which he is best known) was in killing range rustlers from ambush.
On Oklahoma’s Centennial Trail
- Published August 01, 2007
- Written by Johnny D Boggs
And they said it would never last.
But here she is, Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweeping down the plains, hitting the century mark. Oklahoma, a state for 100 years.
Tramping Through Our National Parks With John Muir
- Published July 01, 2008
- Written by Johnny D. Boggs
Tourists that spend their money to see rocks and falls are fools,” a shepherd told John Muir in 1869 during Muir’s fabled First Summer in the Sierra.
Civil War in the West
- Published July 01, 2007
- Written by Johnny D Boggs
The Civil War was gonna be won in the West, Sherman told Grant after the second bloody day at Shiloh.
Forting Up On the Apache Trail
- Published June 01, 2008
- Written by Johnny D. Boggs
Ominous clouds threaten rain as I pull off Highway 80 near the Arizona-New Mexico border at the Skeleton Canyon monument. I debate whether or not I should drive to the actual site where the Apache Wars ended when Geronimo surrendered in 1886.
Loping Along the Guest Ranch Trail, Dude
- Published June 01, 2007
- Written by Johnny D Boggs
The 4x4 pickup slides in the mud as Patricia Chesser and I head toward the branding corrals on the Burnt Well Guest Ranch outside of Roswell, New Mexico.
They Stole Buffalo Bill's House
- Published May 01, 2008
- Written by Scott M. Fisher
For the people of LeClaire, Iowa, it was the crime of the century. “Back in ’33,” said the retired Mississippi River men (customers on my childhood Des Moines Register paper route), “those railroad people came in the middle of the night, quiet as you please. Yes, sir, loaded that big, old house on a railroad flatcar and they were halfway across Nebraska before any of us were the wiser.”
On the Trail of John Wayne
- Published May 01, 2007
- Written by Johnny D Boggs
I'm in Madison County, Iowa, not to view all those covered bridges, though they are charming, but to pay tribute to a great American. Unheralded. Practically unknown.
A Feast Along the Alferd Packer Trail
- Published April 01, 2008
- Written by Johnny D. Boggs
He was a shoemaker, Army veteran, hunter, guide, scout, miner, convict, harness maker, cane carver, horsehair braider, “jack whacker” and, of course, a cannibal.
Tracking the Great Bear
- Published April 01, 2007
- Written by Candy Moulton
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark wrote often of encounters with Ursus horribilis—grizzly bears—as they made their pioneering journey across the Louisiana Purchase during 1804-1806.
