Virginia Dale, Colorado Home Station I drove through Virginia Dale, located near the Wyoming and Colorado border. It’s about halfway between Fort Collins and Laramie. I intended to stop and look it over. However, a blizzard kicked up quite a fuss, so I kept driving. Virginia Dale was a home station on the old stage route. […]
Was Mountain Man Jim Bridger A Liar? I was raised on a ranch. I miss the early morning standing around the fire with the crew. We’d throw a few logs into an oil barrel. Then, we’d talk and visit some before going out to work. This included a few stretchers. Tall tales formed a kind of […]
Old West Romance and Mail Order Brides Countless stories have been told about bachelors in the Old West. We hear of mail order brides. It did happen fairly often. And with good reason. After the Civil War, few eligible men existed in the East for the surplus of women and widows. And the wild West had […]
Happy Jack Light by Stephen Bly Happy Jack lighting came to mind recently. I sat at the kitchen table next to the wood stove, straining to read the newspaper, and I realized a couple bulbs in the lamp above me burned out. Then I regretted not buying lightbulbs the last time I traveled to town. […]
WORKING LIKE A COWBOY by Stephen Bly Everyone wants to be like a cowboy, it seems. Or to know a cowboy. Even in other countries, to be like a cowboy seems popular. I know this because of writing westerns and the responses I get. Such as the Austin-Stoner Series. I can’t count how many letters […]
Horse Thieves Beware! A friend drove me to a conference in a large eastern city where I would speak. Even though security guards patrolled the parking lot at the event facility, I discovered crowbar looking devices bolted across vehicle steering wheels. “To protect from theft,” my friend explained. In the Old West days, most everyone […]
Have You Ever Been Hornswoggled? The man who called me on the phone sounded friendly, maybe too much so. It was the old, “Hi, Stephen, how you doin’? How’s everything in Idaho? The weather treatin’ you and the ranchers right? Know you aren’t thinkin’ about the busy fall yet, but I ran across a deal […]
Puddin’ Feet by Stephen Bly Limpy Thomas was a friend of mine. I learned some old West wisdom from him. He had a horse for every purpose. There was a horse for cutting and one for roping. Another for bull dogging and one for barrel racing. Then he had horses for trail riding or racing. […]
OLD WEST SAYINGS – A Wink and Nod by Stephen Bly One of the Old West sayings went, “A wink is as good as a nod to a blind mule.” In other words, if the mule is blind, no amount of motion would motivate him. You could stomp, wave your hands, flap your hat, or kick […]
Two different attempts at finding reality in the Old West legends by National Geographic and Bill O’Reilly Is The Old West legends reference by National Geographic, or Bill O’Reilly’s Legends and Lies, written more for a popular audience only? Or can a serious researcher find value too? Do either of them get it right? Entertaining, […]
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