Western Horse Training

An interesting new Western debuted this weekend. Meek's Cutoff is a solid, if spooky, addition to the genre. Michelle Williams (of Brokeback Mountain-fame and Heath Ledger's widow) plays a pioneer woman, who, along with her husband and two other couples, points her wagon West and follows mountain man Stephen Meek through eastern Oregon to cross the Cascade Mountains.

In bookstores now and available on Horsebooksetc.com, American Cowboy’s new book “The 100 Greatest Western Movies of All Time: Including Five You’ve Never Heard of” is our definitive—if controversial—ranking. Westerns are our favorite movie genre, of course, and we worked with publishers Globe Pequot to do it justice.

Does anyone remember Frontier Village in San Jose, Calif.? It was a really fun Western theme park that was demolished—but has been rebuilt! Here's a cool article from Peter Hartlaub at SFGate.com. I visited the park with my elementary school and loved it. "I've always been kind of a nostalgic person," says Shaughnessy McGehee, as he walks into his tree-filled backyard.