A modern-day explorer's guide to the Old West From the famed Oregon Trail to the boardwalks of Dodge City to the great trading posts on the Missouri River to the battlefields of the nineteenth-century Indian Wars, there are places all over the American West where visitors can relive the great Western migration that helped shape our history and culture. This guide to the Great Plains states of Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakotas--one of the five-volume Finding the Wild West series--highlights the best-preserved historic sites as well as ghost towns, reconstructions, museums, historical markers, statues, and works of public art that tell the story of the Old West. Use this book in planning your next trip and for a storytelling overview of America’s Wild West history.
I am the author of 15 nonfiction books, the most recent being "Time of the Rangers" (New York: Forge Books, 2009), the second of my two-volume history of the Texas Rangers. Also just out is "Historic Photos of Texas Oil," (Nashville: Turner Publishing), a coffeetable book containing some 200 vintage photos from the oil patch. My other books include a study of Texas disasters, three other books on the Texas Rangers, one true crime story, a biography, a memoir and three local histories, as well as numerous magazine articles, essays and introductions for other books. I have been an elected member of the Texas Institute of Letters since 1993.
My byline regularly appears in a number of national and statewide magazines and I have been an award-winning newspaper reporter for nearly 20 years, most of that time with the Austin American-Statesman.