Old Western Slang and Lingo also Insults and the Code of the West
posted by Del Far on Mar 3, 2009 - 32 comments

Meet Dora DuFran and her cat house of Deadwood; Perle De Vere and the working girls of Cripple Creek; Annie Chambers of Kansas City; and Squirrel Tooth Alice of Sweetwater. In the wild west, prostitution was one of the few career options for women. Western history is filled with many colorful tales of shady ladies and legendary madams. [more inside]
posted by madamjujujive on Sep 21, 2008 - 15 comments

Butch Cassidy wanted to call his gang The Train Robber's Syndicate, but the name never stuck. The gang's core members - most notable among them The Sundance Kid - and a revolving cast of supporting outlaws were most commonly called The Hole-in-the-Wall Gang and The Wild Bunch, and their goal was to be the most successful train robbers in history. The Butch and Sundance site is a comprehensive collection of "the hundreds, if not thousands, of theories, legends and folk tales" surrounding the gang, including an exhaustive list of biographies of the members, their associates, the lawmen who pursued them and the women who loved them, an archive of transcribed news articles dating from the 1880s (including a letter to the editor from Sundance himself), a picture gallery and more. [more inside]
posted by amyms on Jul 22, 2008 - 26 comments

"WANTED: Young, skinny, wiry fellows. Must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily." The Pony Express Home Station, The Pony Express Museum and The St. Joseph Museum all have interesting histories of America's short-lived, but legendary, "fastest mail service across the west." For more extensive reading, there's the National Park Service's Pony Express: Historic Resource Study. (Second link via The Presurfer)
posted by amyms on Apr 15, 2007 - 21 comments

In 1977 Chris Haynes, a set decorator for The Six Million Dollar Man was setting up a scene to be filmed on location in the spookhouse ride of a Long Beach, CA amusement park called The Pike. While moving the various interior props around, Haynes discovered that the paper mache "mummy" hanging in the corner of the ride was in fact a homicide victim, a fact that had gone unnoticed by years of amusement park visitors. The story of how Elmer McCurdy's body was shot to death in 1911, only to be re-discovered & buried over six decades later, makes for an interesting read.
posted by jonson on Mar 29, 2007 - 26 comments

When Everybody Called Me Gah-bay-bi-nayss - an ethnographic biography of Paul Peter Buffalo, son of Ojibwa medicine woman and grandson of the great chief Pezeke. Buffalo died in 1977, but spent his last dozen years chronicling his heritage and the things the elders told him. Be sure to check out the entry on John Smith, a wonderful character more popularly known as Wrinkle Meat.
posted by madamjujujive on Nov 16, 2006 - 8 comments

Classic poetry of the Old West. Alone on the prarie, with only their thoughts to comfort them these poets wrote. Not always the greatest of poems, they still capture the essence of the romantic cowboy.
posted by ozomatli on Mar 10, 2006 - 6 comments

I've labored long and hard for bread,
For honor and for riches
But on my corns too long you've tread,
You fine-haired sons-of-bitches.
Black Bart, the P o 8.
posted by Joey Michaels on Nov 29, 2005 - 14 comments

Most folks know about Jane and Annie but there were many more oldtime daredevils and rodeo queens who paved the way for contemporary cowgirls (flash). More than 170 trailblazers are included in the Dallas Cowgirl Hall of Fame...women who have been the inspiration for art, erotica, kitsch, and the dreams of girls of all ages.
posted by madamjujujive on Mar 13, 2005 - 12 comments