Reading, Writing, and Researching the Old West

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Writing any novel is challenging, but historical fiction adds a few layers of difficulty. A writer has to research the times in which his or her story is set.

Despite such due diligence, a mistake is apt to occur, and some readers are notoriously unforgiving about such errors. Quite rightly, they expect their Westerns to have the ring of truth, especially in regard to facts. How much did a sewing machine cost in 1863? What type of blacksmith's tools were available in Gold Hill, Nevada, in 1863?

Readers sometimes boost their own enjoyment of the genre by doing what writers do: researching topics that are unfamiliar or somewhat forgotten. Learning historical, linguistic, cultural, technological, and other details of the latter half of nineteenth-century America makes fiction more rewarding and fun to read.

In this post, for readers and writers alike, I offer a few resources to add to their browser's favorites.

Maps

Knowing what a trail, a route, a town, a state, or the country itself looked like at a particular time in history is invaluable for readers and writers of the Western genre.

Click the image to enlarge it.

When did a territory become a state? What historical sites existed in Washington, DC, in 1881? What was the White House called, or the Oval Office, before these terms became commonplace? What was the exact route of the Pony Express, the transcontinental railroad, or the cattle trails? What hotels existed in Tombstone, during Wyatt Earp's residency in the famous Western town? What were the names of the streets in Deadwood? Was there really a Long Branch Saloon in Dodge City? Maps answer these questions and many others, accurately and definitively.

Click the image to enlarge it.

A great resource for historical maps is Old Maps Online.

This resource allows users to “Find a place” or “Browse old maps.” Instructions make the process easy, and an “Exact Area tool” allows users to focus on precise regions of the map. A zoom feature allows up-close looks at specific sites. Advanced features let users select a timeline, a specific publisher, and more. Search results are shown in a panel at the right side of the screen, complete with identifications of the maps thus displayed.

Old Maps Online is an invaluable tool for both readers and writers alike—and it's FREE!

Newspapers

There's nothing like vintage newspapers to mine pertinent and intriguing facts about the life and times of a past year, decade, or century, and the Library of Congress's Historic American Newspapers provides just this service—and it's FREE!

States are listed alphabetically, down the left side of the screen, and newspapers related to each state's cities, towns, and other sites are listed, by state, down the center of the screen—and not just a newspaper or two, but bunches and bunches of them!

The index also provides information about the number of issues available for each newspaper, its earliest issue, and its latest issue. With a click of a button, users can access the newspaper or newspapers of their choice.

Click the image to order.

My series, An Adventure of the Old West, is set in Nevada, after the Civil War, so Nevada newspapers of this period have been especially useful to me. The database contains thirty-two Nevada newspapers, including Carson City's Daily Appeal, Morning Appeal, and Daily State Register; Elko's Daily Independent, Weekly Elko Independent, and Weekly Independent; Pioche's Ely Record and Pioche tri-Weekly Record; Eureka's Eureka Weekly Daily Sentinel; Gold Hill's Gold Hill Daily News; and Unionville's The Silver State. (The newspaper of record in my series is the fictitious Excelsior Times).

When a newspaper is accessed, further information appears: alternative title(s), place of publication, geographic coverage, publisher, dates of publication, description, frequency of publication, language, subjects, notes, related links, holdings, and views.

When reading the papers themselves, users can magnify the text, toggle to full page (which can also be enlarged several times simply by clicking it), locate all issues, and access text, .pdf, and .jpeg files.

The newspapers are also introduced with a detailed summary of their origins and histories. This one is for the Gold Hill Daily News:

Gold Hill, Nevada, was one of the first settlements in the Comstock mining district after the discovery of a rich deposit of free gold on a hill above Gold Canyon in January 1859. Soon, silver supplanted gold in yield throughout the Comstock, and Virginia City quickly overshadowed Gold Hill in size and sophistication. The population of Gold Hill reached 8,000 at its peak, primarily working-class residents, including many Cornish miners.

On October 12, 1863, the Gold Hill Daily News was established as a Republican newspaper by Philip Lynch and his stepson John H. Mundall, former publishers of the Placer Courier in Forest Hill, California. They hired as their editor Hiram R. Hawkins, an acquaintance and fellow publisher. When Hawkins left in 1865, Lynch bought out Mundall, becoming the sole editor and publisher. According to the Nevada historian Myron Angel, under Lynch the Gold Hill Daily News gained a reputation as "the best-printed [paper] of any on the Pacific Coast."

 Click the image to enlarge it.

On November 14, 1867, Alf Doten left his job as a local reporter for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise to become the associate editor and reporter for the Gold Hill Daily News. Doten held that position until Lynch's death on February 13, 1872. A Nevada journalist who is now best known for his diaries chronicling the daily life of Gold Rush California and the Comstock, Doten laid claim to the position of sole proprietor and editor of the News in the paper's masthead, securing the title on the paper March 9^th when he purchased it from Lynch's widow for $10,000. That same year John P. Jones, the co-developer of the Crown Point Mine, and William Sharon, a Comstock banker made wealthy through foreclosures on loans through the Bank of California, were vying for the U.S. Senate seat in Nevada held by James Nye. Doten first approached Jones, asking him either to buy the News or to provide him with a loan. When Jones declined, Doten went to his rival Sharon, who agreed to lend him $7,000.

Sharon withdrew withdrew from the Senatorial battle during a contentious campaign. When another seat in the Senate opened up in 1874, he was successful in attaining it. During that campaign Sharon purchased the Territorial Enterprise and fired its longtime editor, Joe Goodman, who had written unfavorable editorials about him in 1872. Although Sharon maintained tight editorial control over the Enterprise, he did not seem to actively exert his influence over the Gold Hill Daily News; however, the newspaper did strongly endorse Sharon and savaged his opponent, Adolph Sutro, in the 1874 race. Comstock newspapers did not claim to be non-partisan.

Wells Drury, who worked as a reporter for the Gold Hill Daily News from 1876 to 1880 wrote in An Editor on the Comstock Lode that Doten bore an honorable part in Nevada journalism: "While he sought to produce a neat and workmanlike sheet, and succeeded admirably, he always recognized the primacy of news in the making of a paper, and did what few proprietors would do these days - that is, cut out column after column of advertisements to make room for good live news."

Faced with debts, Doten was forced to turn over the ownership of the Gold Hill Daily News to Charles C. Stevenson (doing business as the News Publishing Company) in February 1879. Doten remained the paper's managing editor until December 1881 when he moved to Austin, Nevada, to edit the Reese River Reveille. On April 8, 1882, the Gold Hill Daily News printed its last issue, with this statement appearing at the head of the editorial column: "Owing to the great depression in business interests of this town, the stagnation of mining industries in the district and unfavorable prospects for the near future, the News Publishing Company has decided to suspend further publication of the Gold Hill Daily News until July next." July 1882 came and went, and no more issues of the paper were published. The boom times of the Comstock were long gone.

Provided by: University of Nevada Las Vegas University Libraries

The newspapers of the Old West are a fascinating treasure trove of historical information, and they're provided FREE, courtesy of the Library of Congress's Historic American Newspapers website!

Videos

YouTube is another invaluable resource for Western readers and writers. It offers videos that explain and demonstrate just about everything: Colt .45 six-shooters, Gatling guns, a fantastic variety of Western terrain, ghost towns, locomotive engines and trains, gold mining equipment and procedures, tracking techniques, procedures for handling horses, historical sites, military tactics, and much, much more, all for FREE!

Books

Another website that offers a whole library of resource material is Google Books. Some are FREE to download, but others, available only online (unless a user wants to buy a copy) provide “previews” of their contents which is often all a reader or a writer needs to bone up on a particular topic.

Click the image to enlarge it.

The number and variety of books is amazing. The few examples listed here aren't even the tip of the iceberg:

Wild Bill Hickok, Gunfighter: An Account of Hickok's Gunfights

In Search of Butch Cassidy

Tombstone, A.T.: A History of Early Mining, Milling, and Mayhem

Deadwood: The Golden Years

Guns of the Old West: An Illustrated History

The Steam Locomotive: An Engineering History

Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad

Seven Trails West

The Donner Party: A Doomed Journey

The Pony Express - Volumes 16-18

The Last Gunfight: The Real Story of the Shootout at the ...

Annie Oakley: Wild West Sharpshooter

Internet Archives

Internet Archives doesn't contain everything that's ever been uploaded to the Internet, but it is a huge depository of the World Wide Web's glorious past—and it offers many FREE resources that can be read or viewed or listened to online or downloaded.

Click the image to enlarge it.

Resources include Web articles, videos, television shows and documentaries, Hollywood and independent movies, audio, software, images, books, magazines, and more. In addition to the many FREE offerings, there's a huge supply of items that can be borrowed from libraries.

The array and multitude of the resources on Internet Archives is so huge that the site has to be viewed to be appreciated. It contains:

• 330 billion web pages
• 20 million books and texts
• 4.5 million audio recordings (including 180,000 live concerts)
• 4 million videos (including 1.6 million Television News programs)
• 3 million images
• 200,000 software programs

Online Etymology

Words we take for granted seem always to have been in use. Of course, that's not the case; like everything else, they have origins and histories—often interesting in themselves. An excellent source for determining just when a word was recorded (for example, in a newspaper, magazine, journal, or book) as having been first used is the Online Etymology Dictionary.

Click the image to enlarge it.

The dictionary is easy to use. A search window appears, centered, at the top of the screen. Simply type the term in the window and press the Enter key on the keyboard or click the image of the magnifying glass to the right of the search window. The etymology of the term will appear on the screen below the search window.

If there are additional pages regarding a word, the page numbers will be shown at the bottom of the screen; by clicking them, a user advances to the related page.

For many words, “related entries & more,” shown as a link at the bottom of the screen will apply. For example, for the term “chuck wagon,” “wain” appears, once the link is clicked:

wain (n). Old English wægn “wheeled vehicle, wagon, cart,” from Proto-Germanic *wagna, from PIE *wogh-no-, suffixed form of root *wegh- “to go, move, transport in a vehicle” (source also of Latin vehiculum). A doublet of wagon. Largely fallen from use by c. 1600, but kept alive by poets, who found it easier to rhyme on than wagon. As a name for the Big Dipper/Plough, it is from Old English (see Charles's Wain).”

Although some of these related entries won't pertain to Westerns, many do.

Click the image to enlarge it.

Suppose you were reading or writing a Western novel concerning a cattle drive, during the course of which you encountered or planned to use these words:

“barbed wire”

“brand”

“branding iron”

“chuck wagon”

“cowboy”

“drover”

“mustang”

“open range”

“rustler”

“stampede”

“stockyard”

“wrangler”

Click the image to enlarge it.

A reader might want the lowdown on one or more of these words, or a writer might want to make sure the word was in use at the time his or her novel or short story is set. No worries: the Online Etymology Dictionary will let you know!

Consulting this FREE source, we find that the first recorded uses of these words were:

“barbed wire”: 1863

“brand”: 1550s

“branding iron”: 1828

“chuck wagon”: 1880

“cowboy”: 1849 (“cowhand”: 1852)

“drover”: mid-1500s

“mustang”: 1808

“open range”: not listed, but “free range” dates to 1821

“rustler”: 1882

“stampede”: 1844, from the 1839 term “stampedo”

“stockyard”: 1802

“wrangler”: 1888

Finally, for writers, research itself may suggest plot ideas—and another book! That's what happened for me, when reading about the marvel of the transcontinental railroad and the history and politics related to this vast enterprise, I conceived the idea, and eventually the plot, for my forthcoming novel On the Track of Vengeance, book four in An Adventure of the Old West.

In a future post, I'll provide another list of great research sources for readers and writers of Wild West adventures.

Using Resources to Research and Better appreciate the Old West

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

 When we think of the towns of the Old West, only a few names are apt to come to mind: Abilene, Kansas, Coffeyville, Kansas, Dodge City, Kansas, Deadwood, South Dakota, Tombstone, Arizona, and—uh?

Of course, these towns are largely associated with bigger-than-life figures: Wild Bill Hickok (Abilene, Kansas, and Deadwood, South Dakota); the Dalton gang (Coffeyville, Kansas); Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and Doc Holliday (Dodge City, Kansas, and Tombstone, Arizona).

There are other ways to identify—and to think about—the towns of the Old West, though. A map of the route of the transcontinental railroad, like maps of other Wild West occasions and enterprises, reveals the names of a lot of towns (some of which, such as Laramie, Wyoming, and North Platte, Nebraska, developed alongside the railroad).

 Note: Reading about such towns is interesting in itself for Wild West buffs, the writers among whom may develop plots and plot twists, and situations; meet and invent characters; find or create settings; discover conflicts; encounter true-life incidents and scenarios; and obtain facts by which to make stories more interesting, realistic, and authentic.

 

 Black dots = gold mines; red dots = mining towns

Click the image to enlarge it.

Source: Mining Towns in the United States.

A map showing gold or silver mines will usually also show the boom towns that grew up nearby, many of them during the years of the Old West; some are Sutter's Mill, California; Central City, Colorado, Leadville, Colorado, and Silverton, Colorado; Silver City, New Mexico; and Virginia City, Nevada.

 Note: Reading about these mines and boom towns is, again, both intriguing in itself and, for Western writers, offers a wealth of potential material and a mountain of facts.

 Click the image to enlarge it.

 Source: Pinterest. 

 Maps of cattle trails show the towns (and Army posts) through which the trails ran and towns nearby, including (in Texas) San Antonio, Austin, Fort graham, Fort Worth, and Doan's Crossing and (in Kansas) Wichita, Caldwell, Newton, Ellsworth, Abilene, and Dodge City (Chisholm Trail); (in Texas) Fort Belknap, Concho, and Fort Concho, (in Colorado) Pueblo, and (in New Mexico) El Paso, Tularosa, and Fort Sumner; and (in Texas) Bandera, and (in Nebraska) Ogallala (Western Trail).

 Note: Not only do the towns, terrain features, and other points of interest in specific maps relate to particular aspects of the western experience—in this case, mining—but they also provide the other benefits already mentioned in previous notes.

  

 

A good road atlas, such as Rand McNally publishes, is also an excellent way to locate settings for Westerns or for readers and writers to identify sites that may be of interest to fans of the genre.

 

For example, Interstate 80 pretty much follows the route of the transcontinental railroad, and U. S. Highway 50 connects towns to which the Southern Pacific Railroad was linked by trunk lines: Austin, Eureka, and (later) Ely.

In Colorado (and elsewhere), several present-day cities along U. S. Highway 50 existed during the days of the Old West, including Grand Junction (incorporated 1882), Delta (incorporated 1882), Montrose (incorporated 1882), Gunnison (incorporated 1880), Maysville (early 1880s), Salida (incorporated 1891), Canon City (incorporated 1872), Pueblo (incorporated 1885), Rocky Ford (incorporated 1887), La Junta (incorporated 1881), Las Animas (incorporated 1886), Fort Lyon, Lamar (incorporated 1886), and Granada (incorporated 1887); plenty of other nearby towns also existed during the heyday of the Wild West.

On the Rand McNally atlas pages for Colorado, red squares along the highway identify points of interest, many of which pertain to the Old West: Ute Indian Museum near Montrose; The Angel of Shavano near Monarch; Koshare Indian Museum and Kiva near La Junta; Bent's Old Fort National Historical Site, Fort Carson Museum, Boggsville, and Fort Lyon National Cemetery between la Junta and Las Animas; and Big Timbers Museum near Lamar.

On the Rand McNally atlas pages for Colorado, red squares along the highway identify points of interest, many of which pertain to the Old West: Ute Indian Museum near Montrose; The Angel of Shavano near Monarch; Koshare Indian Museum and Kiva near La Junta; Bent's Old Fort National Historical Site, Fort Carson Museum, Boggsville, and Fort Lyon National Cemetery between la Junta and Las Animas; and Big Timbers Museum near Lamar.

Click the image to enlarge it.

 Source: "The Pony Express Trail." Expedition Utah.

 

 A map of the Pony Express route, from St. Joseph, Missouri, west to Sacramento, California, identifies numerous towns, cities, rocks, bridges, creeks, rivers, forts, mountain passes, mesas, and other points of interest in the Old West, including

 (in Kansas) Elwood, Kennekuk, Kickapoo, Granada, Log Chain, Seneca, Guittard's, Marysville, and Hollenberg;

 (in Nebraska) Rock Creek, Big Sandy, Thompson's, Kiowa, Liberty Farm, Thirty-Two-Mile Creek, Lone Tree, Summit, Hooks, Fort Kearny, Platte Station, Craig's, Plum Creek, Willow Spring, Midway, Gilman's, Sam Mettache's, Cottonwood, Cold Spring, Fremont Spring, O'Fallon's, Alkali, Beauvai's, Diamond Spring, Lodge Pole, Thirty-Mile Ridge, Midway (yes, a second one!), Mud Springs, Courthouse Rock, Junction, Chimney Rock, Ficklin's, Fort Mitchell, Horse Creek;

 (in Colorado) South Platte and Julesberg;

 (in Wyoming) Spring Station, Beauvai's (yes, a second one!), Fort Laramie, Cottonwood, Horseshoe, Elkhorn, La Bonte, La Prelle, Box Elder, Deer Creek, Platte Bridge, Red Buttes, Willow Spring (yes, a second one!), Sweetwater, Independence Rock, Devil's Gate, Split Rock, Three Crossings, Saint Mary's, Rock Creek, South Pass, Pacific Spring, Dry Sandy, Big Sandy, Big Bend, Ham's Fork (Granger), Church Buttes, Millersville, Fort Bridger, Maddy, Quaking Aspen, and Bear River;

 (in Utah) Needle Rocks, Echo, Hanging Rock, Weber, Henefer, Dixie, Snyder's, Mountain Dell, Salt Lake City, Traveler's Rest, Rockwell's, Joe Duquut, Crittenden's Pass, Faust's, P. T. Lookout, Simpson's Spring, River Bed, Dug Way, Black Rock, Fish Spring, Boyd's, Willow Spring (yes, another one!), Canyon, and Deep Creek;

 (in Nevada) Eight-Mile or Prairie Gate, Antelope Spring, Spring Valley, Schell Creek, Egall, Butte, Mountain Spring, Ruby Valley, Jacob's Well, Diamond Spring, Sulphur Spring, Robert's Creek, Camp Station, Dry Creek, Cape Horn, Simpson's Park, Reese River, Mount Airy, Castle Rock, Edward's Creek, Cold Spring, Middle Creek, Fairview, Mountain Well, Still Water, Old River, Busby's, Nevada, Dessert Wells, Dayton, Carson, Genoa; and

 (in California) Friday's, Yank's, Strawberry, Webster's, Moss, Sportsman's Hall, Placerville, Folsom, Mills, and Sacramento.

 Note: The points along the Pony Express map identify more than towns and cities; terrain features, way stations, important travel information, such as the locations of passes, springs, and rivers, are identified; landmarks are provided; and, it seems, the locations of private persons' property are supplied. Such elements suggest that the route was more than merely a trail for Pony Express riders; it was something similar to a road atlas, offering not only points of interest, but also information about travel, the availability of water, danger spots, and more. The Pony Express rider, for example, would know that a dry spring lay ahead, that once he reached Quaking Aspen, he didn't have to ride much farther until he'd enter Utah or, if he were in need—perhaps a band of Indians were in hot pursuit, he'd know that, just past Mountain Dell, he'd reach Salt Lake City, where, hopefully, assistance would be available to him. Such information could prove both vital and comforting on a route that was 1,900 miles long!

Wikipedia offers a ton of helpful information to jump start a writer's or a reader's research. (Of course, Wikipedia should be only a starting point, and any information it provides should be verified; often, Wikipedia's own footnotes provide sources that allow just such verification.) For example, the article on “Boot Hill” includes a section, “List of places with Boot Hill cemeteries.” There are forty of them! By perusing the articles associated with the places on the list, one can acquire interesting, relevant information in a matter of minutes, from the convenience and comfort of one's own home or office. The first place on this list, Alma, New Mexico, for example, provides this tidbit—useful for readers and writers alike (the footnotes and hyperlinks are not included here):

 Sergeant James C. Cooney laid out a town on site of Alma in the early 1870s, but left it undeveloped. The town was bought by a Captain Birney, who named it "Alma" for his mother. In 1882 the U.S. Post Office opened in Alma, lasting until 1931.

 The town was home of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid's infamous Wild Bunch gang for a short period. They worked at the nearby WS ranch. Reportedly, the foreman and ranch manager were very happy with the Wild Bunch's work since the rustling stopped while they were employed at the ranch. Tom Ketchum, Harvey Logan and William Antrim, Billy the Kid's stepfather, also lived in Alma at some point. Artist Olaf Wieghorst once worked on the Cunningham Ranch near Alma.

 Charlie Siringo wrote that Butch Cassidy "ran a saloon there under the name of Jim Lowe."

 Alma is the site of a Boot Hill cemetery, which is located about two miles north of the town.

Whether a reader or a writer of Wild West adventures uses these and other resources to research the Old West, he or she is likely to enrich his or her knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of this unique time period in American history, which, in turn, should allow him or her to read with greater discernment and discrimination—and with greater enjoyment!—or to write with more accuracy, verisimilitude, and, indeed, greater elan. It is by knowing our past that we become able to learn from it—and to celebrate it, in fiction and in life.