Free Republic

A great symbol of the rugged old West, or at least as it was portrayed by Hollywood, is riding off into the sunset. The Ponderosa Ranch, an American West theme park where the television show "Bonanza" was filmed, closed on Sunday after its sale to a financier whose plans for the property are unclear. The show, which ran on NBC from 1959 to 1973, was the top-rated U.S. program in the mid-1960s.

How it All Began Just as gold made California, cattle made Texas Along about 150 years ago, Texas was a brand "new" place... opening wide to settlers who were looking for a piece of ground to call their own, a place to build a home, a life with some fresh hope and promise. It was the new Frontier, at a time when the Wild Wild West really was wild, where a man might be called to cash it in at any time just around the next cut bank in the trail. The new settlers huddled in close together to have...

Annual cattle drive goes off without a hitch 650 steers moved through town to unofficially kick off CFD By Cara Eastwood rep4@wyomingnews.com Published in the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle CHEYENNE - Like a scene in an old Western movie, a herd of cattle suddenly poured over the horizon on Sunday morning, in a pasture on the north side of Horse Creek Road. The smell of campfire biscuits and eggs still hung in the air as the steers approached, trotting in the center of a loose circle of cowboys and cowgirls who guided them slowly toward a small opening in the barbed wire...

Look What They Found In Old Wild WestMore than two years ago, archaeologists made an astounding find when they were digging in the dirt about 20 miles southeast of Reno, Nevada: The remnants of an Old West saloon that was open for business from 1864 to 1875. But this wasn't just any old saloon. It was the Boston Saloon of Virginia City, and it was owned by William A. G. Brown, a free black man from Massachusetts who catered to the community's small population of African-Americans, as well as the white people in the town. This is the first known...

<p>LIBERTY, Mo. - This storied town was first settled about 1817 as a frontier post on the Missouri River. Nearly 200 years later, Liberty's town square has become a magnet for tourists fascinated by the legend of Jesse James and the history of the Old West.</p>

Cow Shooting Sparks Debate Over Remnant of Old West: Open-Range LawsBy Angie Wagner Associated Press WriterPublished: Sep 13, 2003 SNOWFLAKE, Ariz. (AP) - Kent Knudson had been fed up with cows wandering onto his property for years. So when he came home one afternoon and found a herd in his back yard, he promptly got his .22-caliber rifle and fired. A red-and-white pregnant cow fell to the ground kicking, and died by Knudson's shed. Problem was, Knudson violated open-range law, a remnant of the Old West. And he learned the hard way that cows still rule the range: He was...

One of the most notorious outlaws of the old American West may be given a pardon. Henry McCarty, who called himself William Bonney, and who was better known as "Billy the Kid," was shot and killed 122 years ago by Sheriff Pat Garrett at Fort Sumner, New Mexico, for the murder of two deputies. Pat Garrett has long enjoyed legendary status for putting an end to the gun-slinging career of one of the old West's wildest. But variations to the story have made the legend one of New Mexico's most hotly debated. This summer, local officials, including the office of...