A seasoned historian assembles a remarkable cadre of authors, who reveal forgotten, true stories of the American frontier.

Between 1850 and 1912, the year New Mexico was granted statehood, the Territory of New Mexico was a wild and dangerous place. Homesteaders, cowboys, ranchers, sheepherders, buffalo hunters, prospectors, treasure hunters and railroad men pushing the borders of the western frontier met with resistance from man and animal alike. Native Americans, who had lived on the land defending their boundaries and way of life for centuries, reacted to the wave of outsiders in various ways. The agrarian Pueblo peoples along the Rio Grande largely kept to themselves. Apache, Navajo and Ute tribes sometimes attempted to co-exist with the newcomers but most often they fought against encroachment. Anglo and Mexican outlaws ran roughshod across the frontier and there was no shortage of bears, wolves, mountain lions, blizzards and bad water to unsettle the newcomers. This collection of frontier stories vividly illustrates the range of struggles, triumphs and catastrophes faced by settlers who hoped to tame the land and inhabitants of Territorial New Mexico. Between 1936 and 1940, field workers in the Federal Writers' Project (a branch of the government-funded Works Progress Administration, or WPA, later called Work Projects Administration) recorded authentic accounts of life in the early days of New Mexico. These original documents, published here as a story collection for the first time, reflect the conditions of the New Mexico Territory as played out in dynamic clashes between individuals and groups competing for control of the land and resources. "Frontier Stories," the second in the New Mexico Federal Writers' Project Book Series after "Outlaws & Desperados," features informative background and historic photographs. Forthcoming books in the series include "Lost Treasures & Old Mines" and "Stories From Hispano New Mexico."

An Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People Using journal entries, letters home, and song lyrics, the women of the West speak for themselves in these tales of courage, enduring spirit, and adventure. Women such as Amelia Stewart Knight traveling on the Oregon Trail, homesteader Miriam Colt, entrepreneur Clara Brown, army wife Frances Grummond, actress Adah Isaacs Menken, naturalist Martha Maxwell, missionary Narcissa Whitman, and political activist Mary Lease are introduced to readers through their harrowing stories of journeying across the plains and mountains to unknown land. Recounting the impact pioneers had on those who were already living in the region as well as how they adapted to their new lives and the rugged, often dangerous landscape, this exploration also offers resources for further study and reveals how these influential women tamed the Wild West.

If countless books and movies are to be believed, America's Wild West was, at heart, a world of cowboys and Indians, sheriffs and gunslingers, scruffy settlers and mountain men—a man's world. Here, Chris Enss, in the latest of her popular books to take on this stereotype, tells the stories of twelve courageous women who faced down schoolrooms full of children on the open prairies and in the mining towns of the Old West. Now with five new teachers covered and a new chapter, the second edition of Frontier Teachers brings these important stories to light. Between 1847 and 1858, more than 600 women teachers traveled across the untamed frontier to provide youngsters with an education, and the numbers grew rapidly in the decades to come, as women took advantage of one of the few career opportunities for respectable work for ladies of the era. Enduring hardship, the dozen women whose stories are movingly told in the pages of Frontier Teachers demonstrated the utmost dedication and sacrifice necessary to bring formal education to the Wild West. As immortalized in works of art and literature, for many students their women teachers were heroic figures who introduced them to a world of possibilities—and changed America forever.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Montana started emerging from its rugged past. Permanent towns and cities, powered by mining, tourism, and trade, replaced ramshackle outposts. Yet Montana's frontier endured, both in remote pockets and in the wider cultural imagination. The frontier thus played a continuing role in Montanans' lives, often in fascinating ways. Author John Clayton has written extensively on these shifts in Montana history, chronicling the breadth of the frontier's legacy with this diverse collection of stories. Explore the remnants of Montana's frontier through stories of the Little Bighorn Battlefield, the Beartooth Highway, and the lost mining camp of Swift Current--and through legendary characters such as Charlie Russell, Haydie Yates, and "Liver-eating" Johnston.

Setting up shop in rip-roaring Spanish Fort, Texas, in the early 1870s, Big Eddie Hager outfitted many cowboys in boots as they headed up the Chisholm Trail. Hager's fame and his company grew with the years, turning Hager Boots & Company, Incorporated, into a global legend. But when a Dallas newspaper reporter arrives in what's left of Spanish Fort, an old-timer sets the record straight by telling the true story of the man behind the Hager legend-the real cobbler of Spanish Fort. The Cobbler of Spanish Fort, published for the first time, kicks off this collection of short fiction by Johnny D. Boggs, the most awarded writer in the history of Western Writers of America with nine Spur Awards and 14 Spur finalist honors. A Piano at Dead Man's Crossing-a 2002 Spur winner-tells the story of an Arizona frontier family from the viewpoint of an upright grand piano. A Comanche warrior imprisoned at Florida's Fort Marion attempts to paint his way to freedom in Comanche Camp at Dawn; Buffalo Bill Cody and his wife fight it out to save their marriage in The Cody War; and Wild Bill Hickok umpires a baseball game in Kansas City in Umpire Colt-all Spur Award finalists. Don't expect gunfights on dusty streets. Boggs fills these 21 Western, Civil War and Southern tales, old and new, with quirky cowboys, revenge, humor, heroes, baseball, teens coming of age, and even a kid playing cowboys and Indians with his mother's hair curlers

Louis L’Amour is recognized the world over as one of the most prolific and popular American authors. While every one of his eighty-nine novels is still in print, a lesser known fact is that L’Amour is also one of the all-time bestselling authors of short fiction. Compared by The Wall Street Journal to Jack London and Robert Louis Stevenson, L’Amour’s Collected Short Stories are now presented for the first time in paperback. The Collected Short Stories of Louis L’Amour, Volume 1, features thirty-five action-packed Frontier Stories. It kicks off a series of nine paperbacks, including a two-part volume of Adventure Stories and a two-part volume of Crime Stories, which brings all of L’Amour’s short fiction to his millions of readers around the world.