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101 Essential Western Events
By Kelly Davidson & Laura Lieff
Break out your new ’07 calendar and jot down these essential events. AC’s editors and staff scoured the country, looking far and wide, high and low, behind every nook, under every rock, and in every corner—all so we could bring you the biggest, the best, the most colorful, and the time-honored All-American favorites for 2007. Whether you’re hankerin’ for some calming cowboy culture, rousing rodeo action, or anything in between, you’ll find it here in this grand listing of what’s on and what’s happening in the Western world. Time’s a wastin’. So, grab your best boots, shiniest buckle, and biggest hat, and get goin...more

Storyteller’s Sanctuary
By Amy Laughinghouse
An 1880 s cabin in Colorado became just the place to sooth the restless, rambling spirit of Louis L’Amour and begin a lasting L’Amour family legacy. “Cold was the night, and bitter the wind, and brutal the trail behind. Hunched in the saddle, I growled at the dark and peered through the blinding rain.” So begins “Here Ends the Trail,” a short story by one of America’s most prolific and popular writers, the late Louis L’Amour. The author of more than 100 novels, including such classic westerns as Hondo and How the West Was Won, he brought to life some unforgettable protagonists, many of them lonely men with hard pasts, searching for shelter or more than that—a home...more

Pure Western
by J.P.S. Brown
All ranchers are herdsmen, stockmen, husbandmen of grazing animals. For some, like Art Looney, the challenge is broadest of all-to raise not just good cattle but sheep and goats as well. Through the ages, among all those peoples who have made the herdsmen’s trade their livelihood, there have been few places and times when a particular branch of that family has achieved anything describable as fame purely from their proficiency and prowess at what they were doing. But the thing has occurred among a few. Among those, one must number the American cowboy, the Australian stockman, the Argentine gaucho, the Mongol horseman, and the Arab horseman—each in his own way having earned a place among the best known husbandmen of the world....more

Adventures West
by Jesse Mullins
Time to rollick. Time to roll. Time to hit those Texas towns that dot the line that was once the grand and glorius Katy Railroad. All aboard as we explore a slice of Americana. There’s nothing like starting off a big road trip with a ginormously large meal. You’ll remember from the last tour we made of Texas (Jan./Feb. ’06) how we started by consuming more barbecue than anyone should ever have thought of attempting. So let’s get eating. We’re in our starting point, Houston, and this place is called The Taste of Texas. A good place for doing a really big, fine steak...more

Backward Glance
by Dale L. Walker
Narcissa Whitman, one of the first two white women to cross the rockies, lost her life filing a role she felt was her calling...more

Canada
by John Brown
The challenges in Canada's cowboy west mirror those in America's cowboy west. The cowboys of the Cariboo and the Chilcotin are riding this way again. Their great-grandparents passed here a time or two a hundred years ago. In this country, that was a time not much different from today. They came, first of all, because a fist-sized chunk of pure just-found gold will always, always buy a man a good steak. Many of them were raw farm kids, hardened as school-children, grown into twenty-somethings, those earliest cowboys across a then-unmarked Canadian border alongside a thousand head of cattle with some ear, some horn about them. Those stockmen still called themselves “drovers,” in fact, in 1858 when the first herds tromped north following, as the cattle business always does, the market. ..more

Trail Riding
by Janine Wilder
You never know what you'll see on the trail in the Great Smoky Moutains National Park. It was early evening on a lovely April day when my husband Jim and I—and our faithful Paso Finos, Max and Smoke—encountered wildlife in its truest form. On what was an easy stretch back to camp, we chatted some but mainly let the forest do the talking. With a gentle breeze tickling the new leaves, birds singing and fluttering high in the branches, and the delightful fragrance of mountain laurel and rhododendron filling the crisp air, it was hard to get a word in edgewise. The forest had our full attention; that is, until we noticed a hiker coming up the mountain. From a half mile or so up trail, we thought something about the hiker’s apparel seemed odd. Yet, mindful of today’s ever-changing trends, we held back our opinions of the man’s apparent nude-toned, Lycra suit...more

End of the Trail
by Blain Williams
Cowboys are Cowboys just the same...more

Letters to the Editor
Letters to the Editor...more

Editor's Note
by Jesse Mullins Jr.
A note from the Editor in Chief of American Cowboy...more

Backbone of the Nation
By Candy Moulton
THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN STATES OF COLORADO, WYOMING, MONTANA, AND UTAH ARE A PLACE FOR LOSING ONESELF AND FINDING ONESELF, AND A GREAT ESCAPE INTO THE BEST OF WHAT THE AMERICAN WEST IS ALL ABOUT. No doubt about it, you can step back in time anywhere in Rocky Mountain country by taking a ride on a steam train in Utah, visiting a copper baron’s mansion in Montana, touring a railroad magnate’s castle in Colorado, or soaking up the wide open country and rodeo events that give Wyoming its nickname as the Cowboy State. ..more

Home on the Hoback
By J.K. Lawrence
This mountain abode got its unique flavor from its owner's and designers' desire to stay true to the region's roots, creating a home that displays local ranch home style. Bob Bradley, outdoorsman, sits on the porch of his classic Western log ranch home and watches the Hoback River tumble through his Wyoming ranch. “I picked this acreage near Jackson for the feeling of openness, the country life. In addition to riding, I like to fly-fish,” says Bradley...more

New Life for the Old West
By Doug Schnitzspahn
The Fort is far more than a world class dining experience. It's a living, breathing museum that serves up the way the West used to be in the days of 19th century fur trappers—even when it comes down to the menu. The bigger-than-life story of Samuel P. Arnold reads like an old classic movie script. In the 1940s the Yale grad and his wife traveled out West for a job at the still top-secret Los Alamos nuclear labs. But instead they ended up slumming with artists and writers in Santa Fe and developing a fascination with Western art, history, and food...more

VIRGINIA'S HORSE COUNTRY
By Janine Wilder
It was a gorgeous morning as the sun's rays warmed my face. I placed my cowboy hat on my head as I put my foot into the stirrup. With a hop I was up in the saddle. Nothing clears my mind and revives my soul like riding my horse Max down the trail and into a world of my own....more

Her Aim Is True
By Daniel DeWeese
Thirteen-year-old Kathy Hollmann has become something of a phenomenon in the world of mounted shooting in the three years she has been at it. Already an accomplished rider when she took up mounted shooting at the age of 10—Kathy's been climbing on horses since she was three years old—she also already had three years of competitive target shooting under her gunbelt as a member of the Single Action Shooting Society (SASS), where her alias is Morning Dove...more

Old State 7-3
By Douglas McAllister
There's an old road that swings to the west, Out from Lehi to Five Mile Pass, Through sunflower fields, That bloom every fall, And through an ocean of prairie grass. To most it's just another old highway, Nothing special, nothing fit to explore. But to those who would see And would listen with heart, Well, I swear it's an awful lot more!..more

The National Cowgirl Museum Hall of Fame

Fort Worth, Texas, has a reputation of being the place where the West begins. Its history, steeped in Western culture, makes it the perfect home for the only museum in the world honoring the women who embraced the rugged Wild West, who galloped into the blazing spotlight of a rodeo arena and who shaped their identity by breaking barriers—the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame...more

The Cowgirl Way
By John Brown
When Stacy Westfall won the freestyle reining competition at the 2003 National Reining Horse Association Futurity, folks were stunned. She rode into the arena with her hair tucked up in her hat and a bandanna covering her face. A dark duster jacket, jeans, and boots completed her costume as the “mystery rider.” It took a second for the crowd to realize that her mount, Can Can Lena, wasn't wearing a bridle...more

When the Civil War Went West
By Dale L. Walker
In histories of the Civil War, the Battle of Pea Ridge is treated as an obscure clash of arms in the minor “Western Theater” of the conflict. But to the nearly 26,000 men engaged and the nearly 3,000 casualties, the fight in cornfields, scrub timber, and brush thickets of northern Arkansas on March 7 and 8, 1862, was neither obscure nor minor...more

Where Dreams Come True
By Marc Bedor
I'm sure I've been on horse trips with people who grow weary of hearing me use that exclamation, but I can't help it. When I get to spend a day or a week on horseback living the cowboy life, it's another day in paradise! And I wish everyone could have the same experience...more

AC Mercantile Fashion
Clothing, gear and good that can stand up to all...more

Essential Western Events

Essential Western Events for May/June...more

Letters to the Editor
Letters to the Editor...more

Editor's Note
by Jesse Mullins Jr.
A note from the Editor in Chief of American Cowboy...more

NORTHWEST PASSAGE
By JoAnn Roe
To see the Northwest is to see a land intricately molded by the masterful touch of time—rugged but restful places that inflame the heart with a passion for the West. Large cities have their own charms in the Northwest. We hear about Portland’s history, Seattle’s hills, and Reno’s nightlife. But between the Rocky Mountains and the North Cascades/Sierra Nevada ranges lies a vast inland area, some of it once a sea. It’s amazingly unfamiliar to travelers, yet cowboys, Indians, miners, and farmers have written its history...more

RIVERSIDE RETREAT
By J. K. Lawrence
NORTHWEST WYOMING HAS A WAY OF DROPPING PEOPLE INTO THEIR DREAMS, AND ONE CALIFORNIA COUPLE WAS NO EXCEPTION. One couple from California landed more than dinner while fishing in Wyoming. Their “catch” was a vision of what would become their dream home. “We are just not big house people,” says Kit, describing her family’s 2,100- square-foot home that sits along the shores of the Snake River near Jackson, Wyo. ..more

A TASTE OF THE WILD
By Cathy Orr
WHILE SOME FOLKS ARE JUST COMING ’ROUND TO THE GASTRONOMIC GLAMOUR OF GAME ON THEIR PLATE, MOST OF US KNOW THERE’S NOTHING MORE EXOTICALLY DELECTABLE. It’s been my experience that hunting stories are like fish stories. They tend to grow more impressive and elaborate with each telling. Maybe the scent of the outdoors or leather—or spent gunpowder— rearranges brain cells in a way that affects the ancient art of storytelling, or maybe it’s simply the effects of too much gun cleaning solvent. Whatever the reason, hunters always have tantalizing tales of the glories of the hunt. While exaggerated claims run as freely as a river in hunting circles, it’s no exaggeration that game on the table is a real treat...more

REMEMBERING GENE
By Holly George-Warren
In last issue’s opening installment of this tribute, we chronicled Autry’s early years and career and his first movies for Republic Pictures in 1935. Here we see how his fame as a film and recording star continued to grow in the 1930s, followed by his involvement in rodeo, the establishment of his own national radio program, his enlistment in World War II, and his postwar entertainment career, during which he developed a production company to make pictures for Columbia and later, television...more

SEVENTY MILES
By Lisa Rohner Schafer
It’s 4:30 a.m., and a wet, sleety snow falls through the frigid darkness. It’s been coming down for the last few hours, so the three young men saddling up their horses, soon to head out and gather the rest of the saddle horse herd, are wading in ankle-deep mud holes filled with water. They move in and out of the tack room, obscuring with each pass the warm light that glows out the door and casts glimmers on the sodden earth...more

RAREFIED RIDE
By Janine Wilder
The Black Hills of South Dakota offer a beautiful place, a magical place—a riding place. The ponderosa pines, so tightly woven through the hills, give these hills their name. The wonderful people we met gave us a renewed sense of spirit and a heightened regard for the land and its history...more

Don't Fence Me In
By Davalynn Spencer
Maybe he learned it in his father’s shadow gathering strays as a kid on the Louis Gill spread. Or maybe it seeped into his blood while pushing cows as a buckaroo in Nevada. But somewhere Steve Fitton picked up how to cowboy like the old timers—reading a weather change in a horse’s tail fanned out with static, finding the high meadows where the big bucks feed, or feeling the hump in his mount’s back before it breaks in two. His friends say he was born a hundred years too late, but his bride doesn’t think that’s such a bad thing...more

Three Chords and the Truth
By Phil Sweetland
Country and Western music have had a love-hate relationship for years. They used to be nominally joined, but what is now called country was until 1962 referred to as “Country+Western” in the trade magazine Billboard. Many still use the linked title, with the exception being the superb George Strait. It almost never applies to modern country radio...more

Threads
By Jesse Mullins Jr
We all find our own ways in life to some extent. In two sizeable stints of bachelorhood in my life, I’ve known the need to fend for myself, and out of necessity have picked up a few “survival” skills. Take sewing, for instance. I’ve sewn only buttons or patches, but I am happy with the tricks I have taught myself. It might seem possible that a mule packer, working alone on his own, and never in his life having seen or heard of mule packs, might sometime in his lifetime come up with a diamond hitch. But chances are he wouldn’t...more

Ground To Defend
By Jesse Mullins Jr
They’re coming under attack, and the fighting isn’t fair. Nor is the truth being heard. Ranchers—and in fact all beef producers, from the biggest cattlemen to the smallest family operators— are coming under attack for putting beef—high grade protein—on your family’s dinner table, and things will only get worse for them so long as the attackers are virtually the only ones being heard...more

Techno Rodeo
By MaryAnne Clemons
We should have seen it coming. With technology penetrating all aspects of modern life, it was bound to envelop the cowboy world too. What no one suspected is that cowboys and cowgirls, being the resourceful types they are, would be right out front in the revolution. Nowhere is that more true than in rodeo...more

Essential Western Events

Essential Western Events for September/October...more

Letters to the Editor
Letters to the Editor...more

The Great Southwest and the Mother Road
By Paul A. Cañada
Every good road trip begins with big expectations. Such is the case with mine, as I take to the highway on a tour of New Mexico and Arizona. But first a considerable sidetrip to get just the right start...more

THE WAYFARING KIND
By Janine Wilder
The trail was as beautiful as ever. The high mountain grass of the White River National Forest seemed taller and greener than when I last saw it. A huge Red-tailed Hawk was sitting atop a giant fir tree watching our every move as the nine of us traversed the Main Marvine Trail to the lakes. We couldn’t help but notice that same Red-tailed Hawk landing atop a huge dead tree further along the trail. I guess it was his way of escorting us out of his territory....more

Teaching the Three Rs
By Davalynn Spencer
It has been said that those who can’t, teach, but that’s not how it works with Lacey Coelho. This California cowgirl teaches, because she can, and she’s quite a master of the three Rs: reading, roping, and riding. Coelho (pronounced Kway-lo) has spent nearly every one of her 24 years in a saddle, starting out propped up on the back of a gentle mount while her family gathered cattle on their ranch near Ft. Klamath, Ore...more

Cookie Exchange
By Cathy Orr
The holiday season means parties, so when it’s your turn to bring the treats, pull up this batch of online recipes, bake a few dozen, and serve with a bow on the side...more

Gifted
By Kendra Santos
As the professional rodeo world readies to roll into the 49th annual Wrangler National Finals Rodeo, December 6 to 15 in Las Vegas, someone will be noticeably absent. His name is Joe Beaver, but in Vegas he’s just as well-known as “Joe Fabulous.” In 1985—the year ProRodeo’s Super Bowl moved to the Thomas and Mack Center—then young gun Beaver made a huge splash in the sport...more

From the Soul
By JPS Brown
A cowboy’s dedication is the same as an artist’s. Both set important goals for themselves, both have a certain criteria they try to meet and maintain with all their might. Both sacrifice years and paydays as they learn their work, and both have had mentors whose voices they remember all their lives. A cowboy knows the picture he wants to make with his bed and saddle, horse and dress and does not like to settle for second best. Levis and Wranglers, yes, nondescript jeans, no. An artist makes his picture with canvas, paintbrush, clay, bronze, chisel and marble, film or poetry. A cowboy makes his with his shadow on the ground...more

French Connection
By Stacy Durr Albert
It was about time that Jess Alway built a timber home for himself. After all, the award-winning builder has created custom homes for clients for more than 30 years. It’s no surprise that the fine craftsmanship of these projects finally rubbed off, inspiring Alway to build a timber retreat for his own family...more

Winners All
By Pegg Schaffer
The Granville Theater became the latest venue to host the ever-expanding Will Rogers Awards, a selection process conducted by the Academy of Western Artists to celebrate the finest in Western arts, crafts, and culture...more

The Case for Cattle
By Jesse Mullins Jr.
In our last issue, we opened this topic with a discussion of what makes the grazing industry different from farming, and how understanding that difference is essential to understanding the role of the rancher as a person who harvests land that would be unharvestable by any other worker/provider. Then we promised to discuss reasons why land taken out of productive use by ranchers can become land that loses its value to anyone, even ranchers...more

Time for a CHANGE
By Jesse Mullins Jr.
We’ve said before that the Cowboy Way is the antidote for what ails America. It’s becoming ever more clear. As we share the latest news (found herein and at americancowboy.com/nd07) about the recent observance (July 28) of the third official National Day of the American Cowboy, the news elsewhere in the country seems to be telling us that this new date on the calendar has arrived none too soon...more

Standing Tall
By Dale L. Walker
Wyatt Earp lived nearly 81 years, spent about six of those years as a lawman, and 30 seconds of those six in a gunfight near the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona Territory. That halfminute defined his long life and placed him in a rare list that includes Kit Carson, “Buffalo Bill” Cody, George Armstrong Custer, Henry “Billy the Kid” McCarty, Jesse James, Sitting Bull, and Geronimo: the most universally recognizable names in Old West history. Until October 1881, when he was 33 years old, Earp had led a mildly interesting, unremarkable life, had attained no notoriety to speak of, and seemed destined to more success as a sporting man or Wells Fargo agent than as a frontier peacemaker...more

Events

Western events for November/December...more

Letters to the Editor
Letters to the Editor...more

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