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Acclaim for Doc Holliday "Splendid . . . not only the most readable yet definitive study of Holliday yet published, it is one of the best biographies of nineteenth-century Western 'good-bad men' to appear in the last twenty years. It was so vivid and gripping that I read it twice." --Howard R. Lamar, Sterling Professor Emeritus of History, Yale University, and author of The New Encyclopedia of the American West "The history of the American West is full of figures who have lived on as romanticized legends. They deserve serious study simply because they have continued to grip the public imagination. Such was Doc Holliday, and Gary Roberts has produced a model for looking at both the life and t...
In the summer of 1930, two federal prohibition agents were murdered. The first died in a hail of buckshot on a dark street in Aguilar, Colorado. Six weeks later, the second agent and his vehicle disappeared on a sunny afternoon along a New Mexico state highway south of Raton. During their fifty-year search, the authors sought answers to why no one was ever prosecuted for these crimes. This is the first book to correlate the two murders, identify how and why they occurred, and name the parties involved and the roles they played. Drawing from first-hand interviews and National Archives files, this book lifts the shadows along the trail as the light of truth is shown upon this mystery. Two federal agents can now rest in peace.
The New Mexico Mounted Police were forged from a frontier civil crisis and hammered to life upon the anvil of necessity. The Sunshine Territory of New Mexico had become the last outlaw haven in the Southwest. In the tradition of their red-coated namesake, the Northwest Mounted Police of Canada, this small band of range riders used their fists, guns, and brains to restore law and order during the closing years of New Mexicos territorial era. They carried their mission forward into the early days of statehood.
For every Wild Bill Hickok or Billy the Kid, there was another western gunfighter just as deadly but not as well known. Robert K. DeArment has earned a reputation as the premier researcher of unknown gunfighters, and here he offers twelve more portraits of men who weren’t glorified in legend but were just as notorious in their day. Those who think they already know all about Old West gunfighters will be amazed at this new collection. Here are men like Porter Stockton, the Texas terror who bragged that he had killed eighteen men, and Jim Levy, who killed a man for disparaging his Irish blood, though he was also the only known Jewish gunfighter. These stories span eight decades, from the gol...
A pictorial celebration of New Mexico's history and landscape. In celebration of New Mexico's statehood centenial, Richard Melzer focuses on the various social and political elements that have made the Land of Enchantment what it is today. Filled with images that document the past hundred years, New Mexico is a photographic delight accompanied by brief insightful essays that leave the reader in no doubt of a history that is both imposing and exciting in its scope. This book is also an official product of the state's centennial celebration. Richard Anthony Melzer is a professor of history at the University of New Mexico Valencia Campus. He is a former president of the Historical Society of New Mexico and is the author of many books and articles on twentieth-century New Mexico history.
When New Mexico became part of the United States, the territory contained 295 land grants, the largest of these being the Maxwell Land Grant. The size and boundaries of the grant were disputed, with some believing that much of the land was public domain. Settlers on this land were fought not only by the land grant owners but also by a group of corrupt politicians and lawyers—known as the Santa Fe Ring (most notably Thomas Catron and Stephen Elkins)—who tried to use the situation for personal profit and land acquisition. The fight escalated in late 1875 with the assassination of Reverend F. J. Tolby, an outspoken critic of the Santa Fe Ring. In a confession one of the assassins stated tha...
Cowboy and drifter Frank Clifford lived a lot of lives—and raised a lot of hell—in the first quarter of his life. The number of times he changed his name—Clifford being just one of them—suggests that he often traveled just steps ahead of the law. During the 1870s and 1880s his restless spirit led him all over the Southwest, crossing the paths of many of the era’s most notorious characters, most notably Clay Allison and Billy the Kid. More than just an entertaining and informative narrative of his Wild West adventures, Clifford’s memoir also paints a picture of how ranchers and ordinary folk lived, worked, and stayed alive during those tumultuous years. Written in 1940 and edited ...
Settlers in the frontier West were often easy prey for criminals. Policing efforts were scattered at best and often amounted to vigilante retaliation. To create a semblance of order, freelance enforcers of the law known as man-hunters undertook the search for fugitives. These pursuers have often been portrayed as ruthless bounty hunters, no better than the felons they pursued. Robert K. DeArment’s detailed account of their careers redeems their reputations and reveals the truth behind their fascinating legends. As DeArment shows, man-hunters were far more likely to capture felons alive than their popular image suggests. Although “Wanted: Dead or Alive” reward notices were posted during...
Melzer offers an impressive new book about famous New Mexico gravesites, usually the only monuments left to honor the human treasures who helped shape state, national, and often international history.
John H. Holliday, D. D. S., better known as Doc Holliday, has become a legendary figure in the history of the American West. In Doc Holliday: A Family Portrait, Karen Holliday Tanner reveals the real man behind the legend. Shedding light on Holliday’s early years, in a prominent Georgia family during the Civil War and Reconstruction, she examines the elements that shaped his destiny: his birth defect, the death of his mother and estrangement from his father, and the diagnosis of tuberculosis, which led to his journey west. The influence of Holliday’s genteel upbringing never disappeared, but it was increasingly overshadowed by his emerging western personality. Holliday himself nurtured h...