Chris Enss

Mary Jane Wadams, with her husband Wilson and their young family, came to Bannack, Montana, during the gold rush days of the 1860s.  She was the first white woman to settle in the little mining town and she made it her home when Montana was a very raw country. Pioneer life did something to its...

Belle Starr checked to make sure the pair of six-guns she was carrying was loaded before she proceeded across a dusty road toward a saloon just outside Fort Dodge, Kansas. When she reached the tavern, she peered over the top of the swinging doors of the establishment and carefully studied the room and its seedy...

The stage driver slammed his foot against the brake lever and hauled back on the reins, yanking the team to a jerking, but quick halt.  He stared, jaw agape, into the steady barrels of a Navy .36 and a Colt .45. Behind the guns stood a hefty man twirling a black handlebar mustache and another...

Kansas native Nancy Bragg first rode into the rodeo arena to dazzle fans with her talents in 1939.  After moving with her family to Oklahoma, she perfected her roping and riding skills as a member of the Tulsa Mounted Troops.  The organization trained ambitious young women and men in the art of calf roping and...

The rough-and-tumble town of Deadwood, South Dakota, was home to a variety of notorious western characters in the mid-1800s.  Buffalo Bill Cody, Wild Bill Hickok, and Calamity Jane were just a few of the infamous names associated with the gold-mining camp.  These three legends of the West were at one time patients of the first...

The shrill cry of a woman in immense pain filled the other wise quiet night sky over Utah’s Salt Lake Valley.  Patty Bartlett Sessions smiled down at the expectant mother and wiped the sweat off her forehead. Barely out of her teens, the woman was in the final stages of delivery and frightened of the...

Since 1875, the most coveted and celebrated achievement in American horse racing has been the Triple Crown.  The prestigious honor is awarded to the three-year-old Thoroughbred that wins the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes in a single season.  Only 13 horses have accomplished the feat.  The Lucky Thirteen: The Winners of...

Eighteen-year-old Nellie Mattie MacKnight stepped confidently into the spacious dissecting room at San Francisco’s Toland Hall Medical School.  Thirty-five male students stationed around cadavers spread out on rough board tables turned to watch the bold young women enter.  The smell of decomposing corpses mixed with tobacco smoke wafting out of the pipes some of the...

A desire for a life in the country, where her family could raise and grow the food they eat, led Jill Winger and husband Christian to buy land in southeast Wyoming that had a house and plenty of area for them to plant a garden, plus raise chickens, milk cows, goats, beef cattle, and the...