Heroes of the Old West came about gaining public recognition in a variety of ways. Some, like Buffalo Bill Cody, came about it by self-promotion. Custer's greatest glory came after his death at the Little Big Horn. Jim Bridger was glorified in the dime novels of Ned Buntline. The prolific journals of Pathfinder John C. ...

Back in those halcyon days, when getting someplace was an adventure, daring drivers ran road races across the Arizona desert to promote the building of better highways. It's hard to believe but as recently as 1929 Arizona had less than 300 miles of paved highways. In 1908 promoters began staging road races between Los Angeles ...

The arid desert south of Thatcher is the site of the Wham paymaster robbery which, despite the name, had nothing to so with "wham," "bam" or other common Batman terms. It's so named because, on May 11, 1889, a band of robbers ambushed a group of soldiers carrying a U.S. Army payroll to Fort Thomas and ...

Burt Alvord was a big, strapping, swarthy-looking char­acter with a bald pate and an I.Q. that was said to be considerably less than his age, which was about 30. Alvord did have a few positive attributes. He was usually cheerful, had a sense of humor and was a mighty popular fellow in Cochise County during ...

Arizona's most notorious lost treasure story for both believers and otherwise takes place in the mysterious Superstition Mountains. The rugged range of mountains east of the Salt River Valley encom­passes some of the most breathtaking, untouched wilderness recesses in America. There is also an aura of mystical beauty that can possess the soul. They are regarded ...

Bill Downing was one of the most disliked fellows in old Arizona. He was moody, morose, bad-tempered, sullen and surly. That was when he was sober. He got downright mean and ugly when he was drinking ol' red-eye. He was so unpopular that even members of his gang couldn't stand him. It's a historical fact ...

At the peak of its prosperity, the fabled Bradshaw Moun­tains of central Arizona produced a king's ransom in gold and silver. Towns and mines with picturesquely whimsical names like Bueno, Turkey Creek, Tiger, Tip Top, Oro Belle and Big Bug were peopled with boisterous devil-may-care miners aptly described as unmarried, unchurched and unwashed. Each community ...

The Old West was still pretty new in 1877 when Carl Hayden was born. His birthplace was a mud adobe house on the south bank of the Salt River that is now Monti's La Casa Vieja. The railroad linking Phoenix with the Southern Pacific transcontinen­tal line at Maricopa and the rest of the civilized world ...

Back in 1850, when the New Mexico territory was cre­ated, the wild, untamed western portion that would become Arizona was sparsely populated by non-Indians. The only white community was Tucson. Word quickly trickled back east about the vast mineral riches. "If ya stumble on a rock, don't cuss it—cash it" or, "If ya wash yer ...

When old Joe Walker, a big, strapping, ex-mountain man, and his party of prospectors arrived at Granite Creek in the Spring of 1863, another old mountain man, Pauline Weaver, was already camped there. The area where the future territorial capital city of Prescott would be founded was the stomping grounds of the Yavapai and Tonto ...