When we think of Western heroes, there’s a slew of them to consider. Men like Kit Carson, Jim Bridger, Juan Bautista de Anza, or Crazy Horse - all were larger life and stand tall in the history of our land. There’s one more to add to that list. He’s an unlikely candidate, a Catholic priest …
Category: Westerners
Basque Sheepherders in the West
Do you remember sheepherder wagons? I recall seeing them off in the distance, out on the prairie, in those Wyoming hills west of Cheyenne. They were found on open range around the west, on land where cows don’t do well but sheep thrive. That sheep wagon, with its white canvas top, was a beacon in …
The Lesson from Washita
The story of the American west is a checkered one, with heroic struggles and devastating misdeeds. It’s war and peace on an immense scale, spanning a continent and hundreds of years. The men and women that built the west are made of the same clay and grit that we are - we are their …
Storming Area 51? Ummm… No.
You can take a joke too far, as a young man from Bakersfield found out recently. He didn’t realize that just the mention of Area 51 fires up a lot of people. So many people took his joke seriously, that some of them - maybe as much as 2 million - are actually thinking they …
National Day of the Cowboy
The last Saturday of July is the National Day of the Cowboy. Many of the first cowboys really were boys - at least, they were when they started out. The job was hard, dirty and dangerous - they had to quickly become men. The cowboy began in the Southwest. The Spanish created the first big …
