ON THE TRAIL OF THE WILD WEST: THEN AND NOW

The author dedicates his book to his mother who 'back in my teenage years she lovingly put up with all my cowboy antics; sacrificed her fox-fur wrap to make me a coonskin hat a la Davy Crockett; never complained about my constant playing of Western records... and even coped with my wearing Western clothes, even when not appropriate like going shopping alongside her in a Stetson!' Covering Dodge City, buffalo, cattle, mining, firearms, the lawmen, the outlaws, justice, fire, Tombstone Arizona, filming in the Old West, cowboy heroes and prayers, this is THE book for all those brought up on a TV diet of Roy Rodgers, Tex Ritter, the Lone Rider, the Rangerider, the Cisco Kid, Hopalong Cassidy et al. Apart from dozens of ghost towns whose crumbling remains can still be found across the western states of the USA, there is almost nothing left of the original buildings of the 1800s, mainly due to fires. Several towns and cities boast replica Front Streets and Dodge City in Kansas is a good example, yet head and shoulders above the rest has to be Tombstone in Arizona where the same street layout survives, lined with buildings in the same style of the period, boardwalks, saloons and other emporia. Many of course have been used in backdrops for movies. When colonisers arrived in North America from Europe, the Indian population had been estimated as between 600,000 and 1.2 million and removing them from their lands led to bitter disputes. This book shows the actual locations of robberies and shootouts, glimpsing through contemporary newspaper reports and superb 'then and now' photographs with grim details of lawlessness, violence and harsh frontier justice meted out by vigilante committees in The Wild West. A small boy sneaks a preview of the dead robbers lined up in the jailhouse for inspection, their names above their carefully placed bodies; there are the cattle business monopolies, trade and shops, banks, wagonloads of buffalo hide ready for shipment and a wonderful panoramic shot across two pages of 19 Western sheriffs armed with their rifles, plus film shoots with James Stewart, firearms and graves. Hundreds of colour photos, 204 pages in heavyweight large softback.