In Northeast New Mexico, the beginnings of promise — and tension

Santa Fe Trail marker near Grenville, New Mexico

(Santa Fe New Mexican) McNEES CROSSING, N.M. — Charles Jordan has seen a lot of living — and enjoyed it. His eyes are searching, his smile welcoming, the lines just below his eyes a roadmap of possibility. You can almost imagine him joining a caravan of traders on the Santa Fe Trail some 200 years ago. Standing in a vast prairie of beautiful emptiness, Jordan looked at a 1920s-era monument surrounded by grazing cows that commemorates a long-forgotten historic event, one tied to the events on that trail. Continued

Larry McMurtry, Novelist of the American West, Dies at 84

(NYTimes) Larry McMurtry, a prolific novelist and screenwriter who demythologized the American West with his unromantic depictions of life on the 19th-century frontier and in contemporary small-town Texas, died on Thursday at home in Archer City, Texas. He was 84. 

 The cause was congestive heart failure, said Diana Ossana, his friend and writing partner. 

 Over more than five decades, Mr. McMurtry wrote more than 30 novels and many books of essays, memoir and history. He also wrote more than 30 screenplays, including the one for “Brokeback Mountain” (written with Ms. Ossana, based on a short story by Annie Proulx), for which he won an Academy Award in 2006. But he found his greatest commercial and critical success with “Lonesome Dove,” a sweeping 843-page novel about two retired Texas Rangers who drive a herd of stolen cattle from the Rio Grande to Montana in the 1870s. Continued

Also: The Essential Larry McMurtry

Outlaws Abandon Fort: Cattle Stealing "Mesa Hawks" Pursued by Officers

An early, and quite sensational, account of cattle rustlers in the Quay Valley.

The Spikes - Gholson Feud

The Spikes brothers, playing with guns.
(Find-A-Grave)

Sam Gholson, alleged bad
guy in all this, though
I have my doubts.

(Digging History) This family feud simmered quite awhile before it ended in the early 1900’s in eastern New Mexico, in an area now known as Quay County. 
The feud began in east Texas during the Civil War when the two patriarchs of the Spikes and Gholson families crossed paths, or should I say just “crossed.”
John Wesley Spikes (see this week’s Tombstone Tuesday article here in case you missed it) was a member of the Texas 12th Cavalry, whose job was rounding up draft evaders.  During the Civil War men were often recruited with the “point-of-a-gun” rather than willingly join the cause. Continued

Stately Spikes Manor. Reminds me of that line in the movie Dillinger, "Decent people don't live that good!" Anywho, the historian J. Evetts Haley wrote a history of the XIT Ranch naming the Spikes' guilty as charged. The Spikes family sued for libel, lining up every Spikes from here to the Atlantic to file a separate case. First up was old Fred Spikes himself, who lost, meaning that the jury wasn't convinced that he wasn't a cattle rustler. Nevertheless, with a half dozen more cases left to go, the XIT settled out of court for a pittance. Today's lazy historians see "out of court settlement" and assume that the Spikes brothers were as pure as the driven snow. But that jury didn't think so; no sir, they did not. See XIT Libel Suit Won by Defendants

Don’t Get What’s So Great About Westerns? Start Here

(NYTimes) ... Let’s start with wide-open spaces and a genre that has repeatedly been written off for dead: the western, which undoubtedly lives on in revisionist variations (“Unforgiven,” “Deadwood”) and the most enduring of all parodies, “Blazing Saddles.”

When people say they hate westerns, I always think they’re imagining something like “Bonanza” or a movie like “Shane.”
Without too much disrespect to “Shane,” the best westerns are rarely so clear-cut in their delineations of right and wrong. They deal in moral gray areas; they take place when society is still establishing basic laws and codes of honor. Continued

The Cowboy's Christmas Ball

Pearl Hart

(Wikipedia) Pearl Hart, born Taylor, (c. 1871 – after 1928) was a Canadian-born outlaw of the American Old West. She committed one of the last recorded stagecoach robberies in the United States ...
The robbery occurred on May 30, 1899 at a watering point near Cane Springs Canyon, about 30 miles southeast of Globe. Hart had cut her hair short and took the highly eccentric act, for a Victorian Era woman, of dressing in men's clothing.
Hart was armed with a .38 revolver while Boot had a Colt .45. Continued

Max Brand

(Wikipedia) Frederick Schiller Faust (May 29, 1892 – May 12, 1944) was an American author known primarily for his thoughtful and literary Westerns under the pen name Max Brand.
Faust (as Max Brand) also created the popular fictional character of young medical intern Dr. James Kildare in a series of pulp fiction stories.
Faust's Kildare character was subsequently featured over several decades in other media Continued

Ranch Romances: The Last of the Original Pulps

(pulpmags.org) … Ranch Romances, by far the most successful of the western romance pulps, enjoyed a 47-year run and over 860 issues published from September 1924 through November 1971.

The redoubtable Fanny Ellsworth -- who also handled the reigns of detective pulp icon Black Mask from 1936 to 1940 -- effectively edited Ranch Romances for half its existence, and three different publishers, from 1929 to 1953.

… one of my favorite editor's quotes from the era, which is Hersey's famous phrase: "There are only two kinds of women in the western pulpwoods -- your sister and nobody's sister."

"Your sister" became an endless line of independent, daring, impulsive yet invariably feminine western heroines with whom untold millions of modern female readers could identify while reading Ranch Romances. Continued

The Homestead Act

(Library of Congress) President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act on May 20, 1862. The act provided settlers with 160 acres of surveyed public land after payment of a filing fee and five years of continuous residence. Designed to spur Western migration, the Homestead Act culminated a twenty-year battle to distribute public lands to citizens willing to farm. Continued

Photo: My great-grandparents' homestead near Hudson (Rice Township), New Mexico.

Sam Ketchum

(Legends of America) Sam Ketchum (18??-1899) Hailing from San Saba County, Texas, Sam grew up to work along with his younger brother, Thomas "Black Jack" Ketchum, as a cowboy on several ranches throughout west Texas and northern and eastern New Mexico.
However, by 1896, the pair had turned to a life of crime, robbing businesses, post offices and trains in New Mexico. The two soon formed the Ketchum Gang which included a number of other outlaws, including Will Carver, Elza Lay and Ben Kilpatrick, who also rode with Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch. Continued

1843: The first major wagon train sets out on the Oregon Trail

 

(Wikipedia) ... In what was dubbed "The Great Migration of 1843" or the "Wagon Train of 1843", an estimated 700 to 1,000 emigrants left for Oregon.
They were led initially by John Gantt, a former U.S. Army Captain and fur trader who was contracted to guide the train to Fort Hall for $1 per person. The winter before, Marcus Whitman had made a brutal mid-winter trip from Oregon to St. Louis to appeal a decision by his mission backers to abandon several of the Oregon missions. He joined the wagon train at the Platte River for the return trip.
When the pioneers were told at Fort Hall by agents from the Hudson's Bay Company that they should abandon their wagons there and use pack animals the rest of the way, Whitman disagreed and volunteered to lead the wagons to Oregon. He believed the wagon trains were large enough that they could build whatever road improvements they needed to make the trip with their wagons. Continued

The Wild Bunch: Sam Peckinpah, a Revolution in Hollywood, and the Making of a Legendary Film

 

(Santa Fe New Mexican) … The Wild Bunch, set in 1913, crafts a story of an American West in decline. There, a band of six outlaws and killers have outlived their time, and the ubiquitous signs of progress — automobiles and machine guns and modern hand grenades — are at odds with the way they understand their world and their place in it.
In this gritty masterpiece, the men, led by William Holden and Ernest Borgnine, look for one last score, but find themselves thrust into the Mexican Revolution and on the run. Continued

An Interview with author Robert Utley

Miles

(Wild West) Robert M. Utley, a former chief historian for the National Park Service, has been recording the history of the American frontier—particularly its military history—for decades, and he shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
He has written or edited more than 20 books, including Frontiersmen in Blue, Frontier Regulars and Cavalier in Buckskin: George Armstrong Custer and the Western Military Frontier. All three are essential references for anyone writing about the frontier Army.
And 2018 saw another command performance from Utley, namely The Commanders: Civil War Generals Who Shaped the American West. In it Utley profiles seven key commanders—Christopher C. Augur, George Crook, Oliver O. Howard, Nelson A. Miles, Edward O.C. Ord, John Pope and Alfred H. Terry—and provides his own informed analysis of their abilities. Continued

Camels arrive for trial service in Texas

 

(Texas Day by Day) On this day in 1856, a shipload of camels arrived at the Texas port of Indianola. Secretary of War Jefferson Davis had urged Congress to bring the animals from North Africa to help the army in its Indian operations.
Major H. C. Wayne sailed to North Africa in the naval storeship Supply in May 1855 and returned with the first thirty-three camels in April 1856. Continued

Billy the Kid's Big Escape

 

(Library of Congress) Billy the Kid escaped from the Lincoln County, New Mexico jail house on April 28, 1881, killing two deputies on guard. He avoided capture until July 14, when he was ambushed and killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett at the ranch home of Pete Maxwell. Billy the Kid is buried in Fort Sumner, New Mexico.
Although he has become synonymous with the legendary Wild West, Billy the Kid was probably born on New York City’s East Side, in 1859 or 1860. By the time he was a young teenager, he had moved with his family to New Mexico, by way of Kansas and Colorado. Continued

Chuck Wagon Cook Off in Logan: Apr 26 at 8:00 AM – Apr 28 at 6:00 PM

 

Join us for a chuck wagon cook off & serve a meal of chicken fried steak, potatoes, beans, rolls and fresh apple cobbler. Each wagon will prepare a meal utilizing the same ingredients, but using their own recipe. Each recipe will be judged in the competition. Fees: Regular Entrance Fee
Contact: Rick Martin/Sharon Reid 575-487-2284 Link

Butch Cassidy

From left, Harry Alonzo Longabaugh (The Sundance Kid), William (News) Carver, Benjamin (The Tall Texan) Kilpatrick, 
 Harvey (Kid Curry) Logan, and Robert Leroy Parker (Butch Cassidy).

(Wikipedia) Robert Leroy Parker (April 13, 1866 – November 7, 1908), better known as Butch Cassidy, was a notorious American train robber and bank robber, and the leader of a gang of criminal outlaws known as the "Wild Bunch" in the American Old West.
After participating in criminal activity in the United States for more than a decade at the end of the 19th century, the pressures of being pursued by law enforcement, notably by the Pinkerton detective agency, forced Parker to flee the country with an accomplice, Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, known as the "Sundance Kid", and Longabaugh's girlfriend Etta Place.
The trio traveled first to Argentina and then to Bolivia, where Parker and Longabaugh were supposedly killed in a shootout with Bolivian police in November 1908; the exact circumstances of their fate continue to be disputed. Continued

John Selman

(Wikipedia) John Selman (November 16, 1839 – April 6, 1896) was sometimes identified as an outlaw and sometimes a working lawman of the Old West. He is best known as the man who shot John Wesley Hardin in the Acme Saloon in El Paso, Texas, on August 19, 1895.
... On the night of April 5, 1896, Selman was killed in a shootout by US Marshal George Scarborough. The two men had been playing cards and gotten into an argument. Continued

George Scarborough

(Wikipedia) George Scarborough (October 2, 1859 – April 5, 1900) was a cowboy and lawman who lived during the time of the Wild West. He is best known for having killed outlaw John Selman, killer of John Wesley Hardin, and for his partnership with lawman Jeff Milton, with the pair bringing down several outlaws during their time together. Continued