True West Magazine
True West considers these the most significant workhorses of the frontier.
Produced in St. Louis, Missouri, by the Hawken family, these heavy, large-bored, full- and half-stock muzzleloaders were designed for shooting dangerous Western game. More rugged than the earlier Pennsylvania rifles, the Hawkens were considered the best of the plains rifles. Hawken customers included mountain men Kit Carson, Jim Bridger, Mariano Modena and Jedediah Smith, among others.
– firearm photo courtesy Rock Island Auction Company –
“The Gun That Won the West!” “Which gun was that?” you may ask, but, as any serious arms enthusiast would tell you, regardless of advertising or promotional rhetoric, no single firearm tamed the American frontier by itself. Rather, a number of different guns were significant in settling our western territories.
True West Magazine
I’ve always heard that Butch was the first to have used relays of horses in 1889 to escape pursuing posses. I had a question today from a reader who wanted to know if the James-Youngers and the Dalton Brothers used relays. My first thought was the terrain was much different out West opposed to the woodlands of Missouri and Oklahoma. I know the James and Youngers were sportsmen and owned racehorses as did the Daltons and they didn’t have to travel many miles to elude the posses in those settled areas.
Butch spent a lot of time planning a robbery and part of that planning was having fresh horses.
True West Magazine
Deputy U.S. Marshal Bill Tilghman’s capture of outlaw Bill Doolin in a Eureka Springs, Arkansas, bathhouse on January 15, 1896, made national headlines and brought personal fame to Tilghman. Almost a decade later, he maintained his notoriety as a top lawman at public showings of his movie, The Passing of the Oklahoma Outlaws, while his wife, Zoe, after his death, perpetuated the legend of her late husband through small booklets such as Outlaw Days. – Photo of Bill Tilghman and Cover of “Outlaw Days” Courtesy True West Archives/”Daily Enterprise” and “El Reno News” Clippings Courtesy Newspaper.com –