His support for the Special Operations Warrior Foundation and the Tunnel to Towers Foundation was valued. More about these organizations and their dedication to veterans and law enforcement could be discovered by visiting their profiles.

A warm welcome was extended to Cole as an honorary member of the #FWPD family!

Soph said, “I remember being a little girl; I was always drawing horses, playing with horses, until I finally asked for one. My grandparents bought me my first horse at about 6. They were not the nicest horses all the time, but we made do and learned as we went. Horses have always just been around me, even now as an adult, for which I am so grateful. I usually get the best ideas on the side of the mountain, in a perfect world—preferably Arizona—on a horse, usually with some cows in the distance and maybe a dog behind me.

“It’s really easy to reflect on what you’re going through in that kind of silence. I’ve always dissected my pain for my own pleasure, which is where I gained inspiration for my sketchy cowboy series, which is really just documenting my own mental health struggles. I’ve found a whole tribe from just sharing my deep truth; people relate to it in all different ways, and I’m just lucky enough to be in a spot where I get to witness it.”

The Spring 2024 STAUD + Wrangler collection showcases new silhouettes, materials, and shades perfect for the season, along with updates to popular styles from the previous collection. Featuring essential denim pieces designed to elevate everyday wear and enhance the ultimate capsule wardrobe, this collection includes knit tops, dresses, and a Bermuda Short tailored for warmer weather. The color palette introduces refreshing pops of white, mid-blue, and a new buttery yellow story.

Among the returning favorites are the Loose Jean and Biggest Jean jacket, now available in new shades complemented by STAUD’s signature belt loop details.

Click here to view the initial collection.

Champagne Problems

Indulge in your deep feelings as you drink this blue and boozy drink. If you have a few too many you won’t remember all your champagne problems.

Ingredients

• Glass of Champagne
• 1 Pump of Blueberry Burst + Antioxidants Syrup

Directions

1. Pump your Blueberry Burst + Antioxidants Syrup into your glass of champagne and enjoy!

Lover

This is our place we make the rules…and the drinks.

Ingredients

• 1 Shot of Vodka
• 1/2 Cup of Soda Water
• 1 Pump of Sugar Free Cotton Candy Syrup
• Sprinkle of Edible Glitter

Directions

1. Combine Vodka, Soda Water, and Sugar Free Cotton Candy Syrup into a shaker with ice to combine.
2. Pour combined drink into a glass and top it off with a sprinkle of edible glitter!

You Need To Calm Down

If someone is steps on your gown, hand them this drink and tell them “you need to calm down”.

Ingredients

• 1 Shot of Tequila
• 1/2 Cup of Orange Juice
• 1 Pump of Grenadine Syrup

Directions

1. Place all ingredients into a shaker with ice to combine.
2. Pour combined drink into a glass and enjoy!

Snake Bite

Raise this shot glass like the way Taylor Swift rose up from the dead… honey she does it all the time!

Ingredients

• 1 Shot of Vodka
• Splash of Red Bull
• 1 Pump of Sugar Free Cherry Syrup

Directions

1. Combine all ingredients into a glass and enjoy!

Raise your glasses and let’s toast to the timeless memories, the journey that was, and the music that continues to inspire – here’s to Taylor Swift, and the cocktails that keep the spirit of the Eras Tour alive in our hearts and glasses.

Nellie Cashman, a dark-eyed Irish beauty with ebony curls fashioned into a bun, fixed a determined gaze toward the town’s main thoroughfare. She stepped out of her restaurant, the Russ House at Fifth and Toughnut Street, and strolled across the boardwalk to a hitching post.

The usual gunfire in the near distance was nothing to be concerned about. “Just another drunken cowboy feeling fearless,” she told herself aloud. A disheveled, bearded prospector wearing tattered clothes and a faded flop hat exited the eatery and walked over to Nellie. “You ain’t worried about those shots, are you?” he asked. “Not unless they get closer to my place,” she said, half smiling. The elderly miner gave his belly a satisfied pat and breathed in the desert air. “You know,” he began, “all Tombstone needs to be the garden spot of the world is more good people like yourself and water.” Nellie listened for the echo of more gunfire, but none came. “Well, stranger,” she finally replied. “I reckon that’s all Hades needs too.”

The prospector gathered up his things and thanked her for the fine meal. “The Russ House is open to everyone, even if you don’t have any money,” she assured him. “Come back any time.” The miner tipped his hat, waved goodbye, and disappeared into the night, pulling his pack mule behind him. He wasn’t the first destitute frontiersman who had benefited from Nellie’s kindness, and he wouldn’t be the last.

Nellie moved to the wild burg of Tombstone in 1880 for the same reason hundreds of other ambitious fortune seekers did: to mine for gold. She had been searching for the glittery substance for years prior to her stay in the town yet to be made famous by the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Convinced that she would one day hit the mother lode, Nellie followed stampedes from Montana to Arizona. When she wasn’t prospecting, she operated boardinghouses and restaurants. “Looking for nuggets is like hunting for a whisper in a big wind,” she reminded friends and family. “You have to have an occupation to fall back on while you’re searching for a strike.”

Nellie’s businesses offered miners a clean place to call home and appetizing meals. Her hotels were always crowded, and if a man had no money, Nellie would provide board and lodging until he made a stake; she would even loan him the money to find that stake. In 1908, the Alaska Fairbanks Daily News described the tenacious, benevolent woman as “hard as flint, with endurance on the trail equal to that of any man, but with an inexhaustible fund of good humor and a cheery word and a helping hand for anyone in need.”  

Ellen Cashman was born in Queenstown, County Cork, Ireland, in 1850. For most of Nellie’s upbringing her native country had languished in a state of depression. Food and jobs were hard to come by. Her father passed away at an early age trying to provide for his family, which consisted of his wife Frances and daughters Nellie and Fanny. At the age of seventeen and with hopes of securing a better future, Nellie made the trip across the ocean to America with her widowed mother and her sister. The trio landed in Boston on May 12, 1867. Both Nellie and Frances quickly found work at the popular hotels around the harbor. Nellie was employed as a bellhop (a job ordinarily occupied by a young man, but the Civil War had left few men to do such work) at an establishment where General Ulysses S. Grant frequently stayed. During one of his visits, he met the hard-working girl and offered advice about her future pursuits. “He was easy to talk to,” Nellie recalled to a newspaper reporter in early 1900, “like everyone I ever knew. When I told him I wanted to do things, because I had to if I wanted to live, he said, “Why don’t you go West, young woman? The West needs people like you.” 

Nellie took the future president’s words to heart, and in late 1869, she and her sister and mother boarded a train bound for San Francisco, a city overrun with people from all walks of life. In the twenty years since gold had been discovered at Captain Sutter’s Mill, less than 120 miles from the bustling city, San Francisco had grown from a scruffy camp of tents and log cabins to a booming metropolis that featured three-story stone buildings, ornately built theatres, and stores and shops of every kind. Nellie was excited about the possibilities inherent in the City by the Bay and set about securing a job at once.

Nellie and her sister were well-received by the city’s predominately male population. Offers of marriage were received daily. Fanny accepted a proposal from a fellow Irish immigrant, Thomas Cunningham, and the two quickly married. Nellie believed her destiny was in the gold fields and set off to find her fortune.

During her stay in San Francisco, Nellie heard rumors of a rich strike in Virginia City, Nevada, called the Comstock, so she decided to venture to the location. In addition to gold, the hills around the mining camp were lined with silver. More than thirty thousand people resided in Virginia City and its surrounding communities. The boisterous town’s saloons and brothels were busy twenty-four hours a day. Cooks were at a premium, and good cooks could make a profitable living. Nellie took full advantage of that fact and opened a short-order restaurant.

When she wasn’t preparing simple meals for the hungry miners, she was doing her own prospecting. She had a natural gift for digging and panning and managed to collect a substantial amount of gold. As a shrewd businesswoman, she invested her findings in restaurants and boardinghouses in other Nevada mining camps. Nellie also used her financial gain to help others. In her own words, “My goal was to make a lot of money and help anyone who needed it.”

Like most ambitious miners, Nellie was willing to relocate to any area where gold was in abundance. She would linger in a given mining camp long enough to see the initial strike decline and then move on. In 1873, after three years of prospecting in Comstock and Pioche, Nevada, Nellie went looking for the heavy yellow rock in British Columbia. Making her home near the town of Victoria, she panned for gold in the Stikine River. Her presence in the remote area earned her the distinction of being the first white woman to live and work in the harsh, seldom-traveled wilderness.

Nellie labored diligently alongside male prospectors in mountainous creek beds and streams that flowed into the Stikine River. She was outspoken and direct, and her fellow miners respected her. She would not tolerate any improprieties and was not afraid to stand up to any man who dared cross the line. She never asked to be treated differently from any other miner. She constructed her own sluice and rocker boxes to sift the sand away from the gold, chopped her own wood, and hauled water back and forth to her camp. When asked by an Arizona Daily Star reporter in a 1923 interview if she had ever been tempted to use her “feminine wilds” to make life easier, she responded with an emphatic no. “Some women…think they should be given special favors because of their sex. Well, all I can say is that those special favors spell doom to a woman and her business…. I’ve paid my bills and played the game like a man.” 

Cashman’s efforts in the Cassair District proved to be rewarding. She retrieved enough gold to fund the purchase of a boardinghouse in Victoria. As usual, the combination of hotel and dining hall was always available to customers who did not have the means to pay for food and lodging. Those who could afford her hospitality were asked to contribute what they could to help the Sisters of St. Anne build a hospital. By the winter of 1876, she had raised more than $500. The funds were given to the nuns and construction on St. Joseph’s Hospital began the following spring.

Nellie’s devotion to the mining party she migrated to British Columbia with was strong. Trappers and lone prospectors passing through her establishment kept her up to date on the health and welfare of the group during her absence from the gold field. When she received news that the men were suffering from scurvy, she loaded supplies and prescribed remedies onto a pack mule and trekked into the mountains. Six woodsmen and trappers accompanied her.

“It took seventy-seven days to reach camp as the winter was very severe,” Nellie recalled in a newspaper interview. “At (Fort) Wrangle, the United States customs officers tried to dissuade me from taking what they termed ‘my mad trip’ and, in fact, when we had been several days up the river on our journey, they sent up a number of men to induce me to turn back.” Nellie’s heroic efforts saved the lives of more than seventy ailing miners and earned her the nickname the “Angel of the Cassiar.” 

In 1879, Nellie returned to the States and was immediately drawn to a fledgling boomtown in the southern Arizona territory. Tucson became a vibrant desert community the minute the Southern Pacific Railroad finished laying tracks through the desert landscape. Nellie believed that a restaurant would be a logical and profitable business to start in the growing pueblo, and shortly after she arrived, she turned the idea into a reality. When she opened the doors of her eatery, the Delmonico Restaurant, she became the first single white businesswoman in the area. In an ad placed in the Arizona Citizen newspaper, Nellie promised patrons “the best meals in the city,” and the popularity of the establishment was proof that her cooking lived up to the bold claims. 

The quest for gold and silver lured Nellie away from Tucson within months of the Delmonico’s grand opening. News that prospector Ed Schiefflin had discovered silver in a mining camp called Tombstone sent her running to the location. She used the money from the sale of the restaurant in Tucson to invest in a pair of chophouses and a mercantile that sold groceries, ladies’ fineries, boots, and shoes.

When Nellie wasn’t working at her store or overseeing the operations at her eateries, she was searching the hills around Tombstone for silver ore. Her initial finds were modest but satisfying. As she had done in every place she had made her home, she engaged in charitable work. She was generous to the indigent, hospitals, and the arts, and she helped raise money for a schoolhouse and the building of a church. When she became too busy with community activities to mine herself, she grubstaked mining expeditions, asking for a modest percentage of the find as repayment.

Nellie’s kindness and desire to help people extended beyond the so-called “polite society” and included assisting prostitutes and prisoners. She provided for any “soiled dove” who lacked food, clothing, and the means to return home to their families. She also made regular visits to death row inmates interned at the Tombstone jail. 

The men awaiting execution were alone and fearful of the vengeful residents in the area. Angry citizens had warned the desperados that after they were hung their bodies would be exhumed and dissected. Nellie buoyed the spirits of repentant men by speaking with them about faith in God and promising that their graves would not be disturbed.

The spectacle of public hangings disgusted Nellie. She abhorred that tickets were issued to attend such events, and she made her opinions known to local officials. She proved how unafraid she was of interjecting herself in situations she believed were wrong, too: When a group of miners wanted to lynch mine owner E.B. Gage, she drove her horse-drawn buggy into the center of the conflict and rescued Gage from the violent crowd.

In the midst of her financial and business triumphs in Tombstone, Nellie experienced a personal tragedy. Her beloved sister Fannie and brother-in-law died of tuberculosis, leaving behind five children. Nellie took the orphans in and raised them as her own. All the children achieved success in their lives; her nephew, Michael Cunningham, who as a seven-year-old boy witnessed the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in October 1881, became president of a bank in Bisbee, Arizona.

No matter how busy Nellie was at the time with the children or the restaurant, she never lost sight of her vision to be a miner. When she learned there was gold to be had in southern California and northern Mexico, she organized an expedition of twenty-one mining experts to accompany her to the region. The prospectors arrived in Guaymas, Mexico, on May 24, 1883. Their search led them to the desolate area called Golo Valley. Legend maintains that Nellie happened onto a rich vein of gold in the mountains surrounding the arid basin she called Cashman’s Mine, but a priest persuaded her to keep the discovery a secret out of fear that the simple way of life of the indigenous people would be jeopardized and possibly destroyed by a gold rush.

In fact, Nellie and the other miners nearly lost their lives on foot in the hot, sandy desert valley. They underestimated the number of provisions necessary to make the journey, and the heat and lack of water nearly killed them. It was Nellie’s tenacious nature that saved the party. As the healthiest member of the group, she set out on her own to find help. She returned a day later with guides, burros, and goatskins filled with water. The expedition was subsequently canceled, and they made their way back to Tombstone.

In 1886, Nellie sold the Russ House and mercantile, gathered her family together, and for a brief time wandered the mining camps of Wyoming, Montana, and New Mexico. Realizing the vagabond way of life was not the best for her nieces and nephews, and she placed them in various Catholic boarding schools in the West. Although the children were not physically with her as they had been, she maintained a close relationship with each one of them and never failed to encourage them in their pursuits or let them know how devoted she was to their happiness and well-being.

For ten years, Nellie bounced around from mining community to mining community. She owned boardinghouses in Kingston, New Mexico, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and Globe, Arizona. During her stay at Globe, she paged through a July 21, 1897 edition of a Phoenix newspaper and read an article about an enormous strike in Alaska. She quickly began making arrangements to explore the Klondike region. An article in the Arizona Daily Citizen on September 15, 1897, announced her intentions to leave the Southwest.

Nellie calculated that a fully equipped expedition to the Yukon would cost $5,000. She hoped to assemble a six-man team of like-minded miners and trackers to go along with her. All attempts to raise funds for the trip or attract interested parties to accompany her failed, but it did not stop Nellie from making the journey. On February 15, 1898, she reached Skagway, Alaska. She was determined to travel the perilous Chilkoot Pass to the gold fields.

Dressed in an outfit befitting a Klondike miner and hauling ample supplies for exploration, the feisty prospector set out to find her bonanza. A newspaper reporter with the British Colonist interviewed the fifty-three-year-old woman prior to her departure from the civilized area for the wild countryside. “The first white woman to penetrate the Cassair country and who twenty-one years ago visited Alaska in a quest for gold arrived in the city last night from ’Frisco,” the February 1898 article read. “She is out now for a big stake, nothing more or less than the mother lode of the far-framed Klondike region. Miss Cashman is a lithe, active-looking woman with jet black hair and possessed all the vivacity and enthusiasm of a young girl.”

Nellie managed to assemble a small team of men to accompany her and fully expected to be joined by others who wanted to go north along the crude mountainous trail. After nearly a three-week trip, Nellie reached the section of wilderness where she would begin panning for gold in the Dyea River and mining in the Rocky Mountains. She filed four claims and worked them all herself. By September 1898, Nellie had recovered more than $100,000 from a claim she called No. 19 Below.

In October, Cashman took a break from prospecting and invested her fortune in a restaurant in Dawson called the Cassair. Half of the facility was used to serve food, and the other half was a grocery store. She transformed a portion of the mercantile into a small meeting place for lonely sourdoughs. The miners could sit and enjoy a cup of coffee and a fine cigar while visiting with one another, all of which Nellie offered for free. Her generosity extended to orphaned children, destitute women, and elderly prospectors. She spent tireless hours raising money for hospitals and the building of churches.

In 1899, Nellie experienced another tragedy. Her mother, Frances, who had lived in San Francisco since she and her daughters moved west in 1869, died. Frances was 101 years old when she passed away, and according to the staff at the Magdalen Asylum where she lived, she always spoke fondly of her “adventurous girl, Nellie.”

Nellie resided in Dawson for seven years and divided her time between the restaurant, the mercantile, and mining claims. In 1905, she moved her business ventures to Fairbanks. A gold strike on the Chena River near the mining town prompted her to relocate. The drive to find the ultimate strike continued to pull Nellie out of the comfort of her grocery store and eatery and back into the frigid Alaskan hinterlands. At the age of fifty-five, she was recognized as the only female mining expert in the territory. Prospectors frequently sought her advice on where to search for a claim and how to best work the claim after it had been located.  Ironically, mining regulations prohibited unmarried women from filing new claims; they could only purchase claims that had already been filed.

Nellie was not resentful about having to work with men to achieve any mining success, nor did she ever worry that a man would take advantage of her. According to a 1923 article in the Arizona Daily Star, Nellie was highly complimentary of her male counterparts. “I have mushed with men, slept out in the open, washed with them, and been with them constantly, and I have never been offered an insult…. A woman is safe among miners as at her own fireside. If a woman complains about her treatment by any of the boys, she has only herself to blame…. I can truthfully say that there was never a bigger-hearted class of men than the genuine sourdoughs of Alaska.”

From 1907 to 1923, Nellie devoted herself almost entirely to striking it rich. Traveling across the Alaskan territory from the upper Middle Koyukuk River to a camp called Cold Foot, sixty miles from the Artic Circle, she was convinced she would hit it big. The last gold stampede Nellie participated in was at Nolan’s Creek at the base of the Brooks Range Mountains. While poking around the jagged bluffs she found a vein of gold that lined the rock under the earth. Getting to the heart of the find required a team of workers, heavy equipment, and even heavier financial backing.

Hoping to attract investors, Nellie formed a corporation called the Midnight Sun Mining Company and immediately began selling stock in the business. She had little difficulty acquiring the initial backing to begin ferreting out the gold. After mining commenced, she made frequent trips back to the States to solicit capital to continue operations.

Nellie’s fund-raising visits to New York and Washington, D.C., always generated newspaper or magazine articles about her character and vocation. “I’ve suffered trial and hardships in the frozen plains of Alaska and in the deserts of Arizona,” she told a reporter for the Cordova Alaska Times in 1917. “I’ve been alone all my life, but I have been happy and healthy. That’s why all are fooled by my age. And that is why I’m not afraid like most women to tell you that I’m sixty-seven and that I’m mighty apt to make a million or two before I leave this romantic business of mining.”

No amount of coaxing could entice Nellie to remain with her family after her ventures stateside. She insisted she had to get back to her business in the Alaskan territory, maintaining that she was a “long way from the cushion rocker stage.” In 1924, she proved her point when she led a dog-sled team 750 miles over the country’s frozen terrain. The feat earned her the title of Champion Woman Musher.

Eight months after the persistent miner accomplished the seventeen-day mushing trip, she came down with a cold that advanced into double pneumonia. The pioneer miner with a benevolent spirit died on January 4, 1925, at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Victoria and was laid to rest next to her sister at Ross Bay Cemetery.

Kelsey Keeter

“My name is Kelsey Keeter, and as the proud owner of KK&Co, I’ve intertwined my love for hairstyling with the Western way of life, a passion that has been part of me since my early days in rodeo. Opening my salon in Decatur Texas, culminates years spent honing my craft and embracing the Western lifestyle.

“My salon is more than just a business; it connects my passions with extraordinary individuals representing the core values of the Western world. Every day, I’m grateful for this journey that allows me to keep my passion for rodeo alive, to meet fascinating people, and to make a difference one haircut at a time.

“Working with iconic figures and brands in the Western industry, from rodeo TV personalities to fashion giants such as Western Horseman, American Hat, and Cavender’s, has not only been a privilege but a thrilling journey back to my roots. What I love most about my profession is the opportunity it gives me to touch lives—there is immense joy in bringing smiles to faces and making people feel good about themselves.”

Sierra Emerson

“As a stylist deeply immersed in the western community, my passion extends beyond just creating beautiful hair. My education in cosmetology was funded by a full rodeo scholarship to Weatherford College and I’m not afraid to show up to an education class in my boots. Fifteen years in this industry, an 8x award-winning stylist, I’ve learned that my role goes beyond hair; it’s about fostering confidence and meaningful connections.

“Operating in my private suite, The Hair Saloon, in the Texas Hill Country enables me to not only enhance outer beauty but also engage in relatable conversations that inspire growth and validate my clients’ feelings. There’s a profound joy in helping individuals in the western industry feel empowered and confident, both inside and out, as they embrace their authentic selves since it’s a lifestyle that I live and breathe daily. The cowgirl spirit lives in all of us and I’m honored to help people of not only our western culture but outside of the western industry have a gimped of that determination through my chair.”

Kodi Berry

“Being a stylist that operates primarily in the western community is like having the best of both worlds because of the ties I have with the industry. Nothing makes me love my job more than when I have friends who are wives of rodeo contestants, sisters, mothers, or even the contestants themselves that come sit in my chair. Not only that, but I love when I get to work weddings for these ladies who I consider more than just clients, they are family!

“The one event that trumps most of my yearly events is when the NFR rolls around. Whether it’s a wife or a girlfriend of a contestant or a competitor themselves, nothing tops the feeling of making all the ladies feel beautiful as they celebrate their families during that time. Styling hair at the finals is more than just working, I get to work with the people I love.”

“I’m proud of my home state’s rich history in every area, from music to food to geography and people. There’s a legacy of artisans here — I know it as a songwriter, and I see it in the craftsmanship of Lucchese. When I slide on a pair of Lucchese boots, I feel like I’m at home.”

Never Enough is a testament to how much he cares about country music. “Sometimes I wish I didn’t care so much because everything would be easier. Hopefully one day people will look back at what I’ve done in country music and think it was honest and good for the genre,” Parker says. “This album may be called Never Enough, but if they see that what I did was real, that’ll be enough for me.”

The Ruger Fund was established in 2023 by Parker McCollum, with a philanthropic objective to support various charity organizations close to his heart. McCollum always stands up for and alongside those in need, and he is passionate about giving back. The Ruger Fund helps him achieve this goal. A portion of proceeds from every Lucchese x Parker McCollum script hat purchase will benefit The Ruger Fund.

The exhibition encompasses various art forms, including paintings, drawings, sculpture, traditional Western art like silversmithing and boot making, and pieces from Indigenous artists. Megan Wimberley, the exhibition chair and Director of CGA, emphasizes the importance of showcasing women’s contributions in the American West, often overlooked or untold.

The exhibition opening, from August 1-3 at the A.R. Mitchell Museum of Western Art, promises a weekend of events including classes, opportunities to learn from women in both land work and art, a luncheon, and more. Artwork featured in the exhibition will be available for sale throughout.

Cowgirl Artists of America’s mission is to enhance opportunities and representation for female western artists through community, education, collaboration, and promotion. The A.R. Mitchell Museum of Western Art, established in 1981, honors the art and life of Arthur Roy Mitchell, a notable figure in Trinidad, Colorado.

Kelsea said on social media, “ten years ago, I was twenty, naive, starry eyed, and absolutely relentless on putting my music out into the world. I’m proud to say, nothing has changed…except a DECADE of this wildly beautiful journey we’ve gotten to share full of tours and sing alongs, wins and losses, and growing up together.”

The singer continued, “soooo, before we move into new music (yes, it’s coming I swear) I wanted to celebrate the beginning with you. 

“the song that started it all, love me like you mean it (reimagined and ten years later) comes out tomorrow night at midnight. Oh, and I’ll be performing it on the @cmt awards Sunday. See you there. Love you, mean it.

“(thank you @alysavanderheym for helping me add some 2024 spice and your brilliance to this little song that could, and @reidgah for cooking up this lil teaser track)”