No End in Sight
By Jesse Mullins, Jr.
Los Angeles: record-setting sales. Oklahoma City: record sales. Cody, Wyo.: record sales. Like a broken record, the news each year is getting to be… well, broken records—of high sales figures, that is, in new Western art. Los Angeles: record-setting sales. Oklahoma City: record sales. Cody, Wyo.: record sales. Like a broken record, the news each year is getting to be… well, broken records—of high sales figures, that is, in new Western art. Here’s to those who held onto their holdings when the going was rough. Though each year brings ever-higher sales reports, such was not always so for a number of years in the 1990s, and in the late 1980s one would have thought that the Western art business had struck the tent and quit the country, given its dismal sales. So for those collectors out there who stayed true believers, never doubting, this is their vindication...more

Riding the TV Ranges
By Dan Gagliasso
We’ll all be gathering yearlings on Jupiter before we see another crop of Westerns like those of a half-century ago. A stalwart U.S. marshal tames the streets of Dodge City with little more support than the faithful backing of a small clan—chiefly a gimpy deputy, the local doctor, and a female saloon owner (was she that or maybe a little more?). Two aging and irascible Texas Rangers take a trail herd to Montana through a whirlwind of heroics, tragedy, and the upholding of unspoken loyalties. Two dapper gambler brothers bluff and bargain their way across the West having more fun and adventures than a dozen colts in high spring pasture. If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m talking TV Westerns. From Gunsmoke to Lonesome Dove, for the last 50-odd years more folks have arm-chair experienced the West watching small screen Westerns than ever paid to watch most of their big screen counterparts...more

Travel: Texas and Oklahoma
By Jesse Mullins, Jr.
North Texas is an experience in cowboy history and culture just awaiting the adventuresome road tripper. And a the Great American West lives on in Oklahoma, as anyone will discover on a trip such as starts right here. Ride along as we let the adventure unfold. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover, so if we’re going to take a road trip all along the length of Texas Highway 287 from the Dallas-Fort Worth area to Amarillo and back, we’d better…well, eat some barbecue first. Because barbecue is what wise travelers choose to fortify themselves for the rigors of long road trips. And while this sampler platter at Shady Oak Barbecue is being dispatched with considerable relish out here on their screened back porch, let’s go over the Starter’s Essentials. Not many places in the United States offer the Real West experiences of the country found hereabouts and further west—from Fort Worth you can pretty much take your pick of directions, especially northwest, west, and southwest, and you’ll get a dose of what makes the West the best...more

No Time to Spare
By Kendra Santos
The Timed Event Championship of the World came down to a tie, then a tie-breaker, all the while writing a memorable chapter to this colorful event. Rodeo’s roots are easily traced back to the ranch, where cowboys held contests amongst themselves to add the challenge of a little friendly competition to a long week’s work. He who could get the job done most efficiently — doctor a sick calf the quickest and with the least stress on the animal, for example—earned bragging rights and a feeling of self-satisfaction that can’t be bought. Winning the Wrangler Timed Event Championship gives today’s most versatile timed-event contestants a very similar sense of pride. Cowboys compete in all five timed-event disciplines — heading, heeling, tie-down roping, steer wrestling, and steer roping — in a five-round marathon. Those 25 times are then totaled, and he with the fastest total time wins. ..more

Head for the Mountains!
By Candy Moulton
Colorado, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming beckon to Western travelers in search of high mountain adventure. MONTANA - After the fight at the Little Bighorn—which the Lakotas called the Greasy Grass—in June of 1876, Sitting Bull and his followers migrated north. They would spend the next five years in far northern Montana and southern Canada before eventually surrendering at Fort Buford in western North Dakota and being relocated to a reservation in South Dakota. In the years after Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull kept his camps north of the Milk River—named by Meriwether Lewis, who wrote on May 8, 1805: “The water of this river possesses a peculiar whiteness, being about the color of a cup of tea with the admixture of a tablespoon of milk. From the colour of its water we called it Milk River.” ..more

Rugged Elegance
By Jesse Mullins, Jr.
The Schatz home in Wyoming is designed for living life in a breezy, bold, Western way. “My favorite thing is the view of the mountains,” said Jinda Schatz, who with her husband, Dr. Richard A. Schatz, maintains a Jackson Hole abode where the living is easy—and as Western as those rugged surroundings. “It’s beautiful. You come in and come to the window in the great room and that’s the first thing you see.” The style is largely Thomas Molesworth-inspired, with its 1930s-era mountain lodge feeling of rusticity and solidity. “The wood is that gnarly style, the rooms and furnishings are big and oversized,” said designer Cheryl Gallinger, who partners in Gallinger-Trauner Design in Jackson. ..more

Six Days Ablaze Part 1
By John R. Erickson
Sunday, March 12, 2006 When the sun came up that Sunday morning, the wind was already howling out of the west. As the day went on, it grew worse and it was exactly what we didn’t need in the Texas Panhandle, another day of hot, dry wind. Around eight that night, our son Scot called from Amarillo. We don’t have television and he knew we hadn’t been watching the news. “Dad, there’s a huge fire in Roberts County and you need to find out where it is. If it’s close, you’d better get out of that canyon.” We lived on a ranch in northeast Roberts County, and our house sat in a deep, tree-lined canyon north of the Canadian River. We loaded up in our Excursion (me, Kris, her mother, and two of our grandchildren) and drove up to a high spot in the east pasture, where we had a good view of the country to the south. ..more

Western’s Past, Present & Future
By Vernell Hackett
If they were to sit down and compare notes, the folks working the fields of Appalachia and the family tending the ranch in Wyoming would find more similarities in their lifestyle than might be expected. Such is the case with traditional country music and Western music. While the singers may come from different parts of the country, the stories told in the songs are about the same things—family, love, the working folks, the land, God and country. In fact, many of the folks who write and sing Western music think of their music as country with a Western flavor. And guess what? Some of the country singers in Nashville think of their music as country with a Western flavor! Joni Harms says her music has a Western feel with a traditional country sound. Harms is steeped in the tradition of the West. Her songs are about family, the land, and life in general. ..more

Difference Maker
By Kendra Santos
The best of the best. What a concept. It’s the same success quotient used by every other Major League sport in the world. And it’s working for ProRodeo. Born in 2000, the Wrangler ProRodeo Tour features the top contestants in professional rodeo at some of the richest, most prestigious rodeos in all the land. The idea has been to divide the year into two tours, winter and summer, each spread across 12 rodeos. Cowboys and cowgirls are allowed to pick 10 stops at which their performances will count toward possible tour finale qualification...more