Sometimes the best things happen when you least expect them. I started this year with a few writing assignments for a national magazine that I’d been writing for over a period of a couple of decades. With little warning, in February I was notified (along with a slew of other writers) that the publication was folding – immediately.
But when one door closes, another opens. Within a couple of months, I was in the Cowboy State Daily office in Cheyenne when I spontaneously told Editor Jimmy Orr, there was an opportunity to pick up some stories by writers like myself who had written for that by then-defunct magazine.
The American West for Cowboy State Daily was born. Two of my long-time writing friends and I would begin the series, writing about Wyoming and the American West.
We launched in June.
James A. Crutchfield, an expert on westward expansion and the mountain man era, became a Cowboy State Daily contributor with a piece about Rendezvous.
He has since written on such diverse subjects as Smokey Bear, the transcontinental railroad, the Santa Fe Trail.
Jim is a soft-spoken writer who has been recognized with many awards and accolades. His Tennessee background, and experience in conceiving and editing The Encyclopedia of Westward Expansion, means he has tremendous understanding of how the concept of the West has moved in the four centuries since the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.
He's also written stories about Cumberland Gap and the death of Meriwether Lewis at Grinder Stand along the Natchez Trace, not far from his own home in Franklin, Tennessee.
With more than 50 books to his credit, Jim is a member of the Western Writers Hall of Fame, which is located at the McCracken Research Library in the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, a winner of many awards including one for meritorious service from the American Association of State and Local History and the Owen Wister Award given by Western Writers of America for Lifetime Contributions to Western Literature.
Terry A. Del Bene co-edited the Encyclopedia of Westward Expansion, and he has written several other history books including The Donner Party Cookbook.
With a Ph.D. in anthropology, he spent his career working in archaeology for various federal agencies in a variety of locations in North Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, Utah and New Mexico. Terry’s first article in The American West series was a tale of Rudyard Kipling in Yellowstone.
My favorite of the stories he’s written is about the Great Diamond Swindle of Southwest Wyoming.
As the American West series took off – and expanded from a couple of articles a week to five – I tapped into my network of friends who are writers. By now you’ve been seeing their articles for several months.
Back in 2006 I was invited to write a biography about Chief Joseph for a series of books called American Heroes. The series and the subjects were selected by a longtime mentor of mine, Dale L. Walker, and sold by agent Nat Sobel to Forge Books and the great publisher Tom Doherty.
Dale hand-selected the American Heroes writers who also included James A. Crutchfield who wrote George Washington, Rod Miller (who writes for Cowboy State Daily as R. B. Miller to avoid confusion with that bushy bearded guy who has roots in Carbon County) who wrote John Muir, Lori Van Pelt whose subject was Amelia Earhart, and William Groneman III who wrote David Crockett.
When it was time to add American West writers, it was easy for me to call the best of the best, my American Heroes friends.
Rod was raised in Utah in a cowboy family and during high school and college he rode bareback broncs. He rode for the Utah State University rodeo team, and later competed in the PRCA and later worked behind the chutes and as a chute boss for a stock contractor.
Rod worked in broadcast journalism and spent nearly four decades working for an ad agency. His entry to creative writing started with cowboy poetry, but he also writes nonfiction and fiction – including both novels and short stories.
For the American West his stories have ranged from tales of American explorers to Indian massacres. My favorite of the articles he has had published this year is the story of Hawaiian Paniolos Ikua Purdy, Jack Low, and Archie Ka‘au‘a, who competed at Cheyenne Frontier Days in 1908.
I admire William Groneman (Bill) beyond measure for the sacrifice he made along with his fellow firemen in New York on 9/11. His account of that day launched him as an American West writer and even though I have heard him speak about that day (and those that followed) and have read his memoir, I always get a lump in my throat when he shares his story.
Bill’s passion is the Alamo and David Crockett, and he’s written several articles related to that pivotal event in American Western history. Bill brought all of his interests together in his premier story for Cowboy State Daily.
One of my best memories of Bill occurred in 2010 when we were at a Western Writers of America convention in Tennessee and took a tour that included Cumberland Gap and many places important to David Crockett’s story. I had the privilege of Bill’s companionship during the day and his side-narrative certainly enhanced anything the tour leaders shared.
On another occasion he took me on a personal tour of the Alamo in San Antonio. I’ll never look at that old mission site the same, having walked the ground with Bill.
Lori Van Pelt wrote her biography of Amelia Earhart while I was working on Chief Joseph.
At the time she lived in Saratoga, so we could have lunch together about once a month, at the Hotel Wolf. We’d be there when they opened at 11:30 a.m., and the last to leave when the lunch serving ended at 2 p.m. – sharing details of our research and commiserating over the gallons of green ink our editor Dale Walker was spilling on our draft manuscripts.
We are both better writers for having worked with Dale. Lori has written several nonfiction books, dozens of articles, and many short stories.
Her first articles for Cowboy State Daily dealt with Amelia Earhart and most recently Lillian Heath.
Linda Wommack is a Colorado author and a member of the Colorado Author’s Hall of Fame with 20 books to her credit. She has written for several magazines and has often written about the outlaws of the American West. Her story of Mo-chi, a Cheyenne woman warrior, is a reminder that strong women have always been in the West, making their mark.
South Dakota writer Bill Markley has authored or co-authored books about such subjects as Geronimo, Sitting Bull, and Wild Bill Hickok. He has also been involved in many film productions as a reenactor including “Gettysburg” and “Dances with Wolves,” which was a subject of one of his books.
Markley has debunked legends in his books, and he did the same with his first two articles for Cowboy State Daily: “The Pony Express and Buffalo Bill Cody” and legends related to Wild Bill Hickok and Deadwood.
The newest writer for The American West is also my oldest writing connection. I started work for the Saratoga Sun more than 50 years ago when I was still in high school and Dick Perue was my editor. He taught me to write on a typewriter – rather than with a pen and piece of paper. He used a red pen and spilled gallons of ink editing my articles.
He inherited a collection of historical materials from former editors/publishers of the Saratoga Sun, R. I. Martin and R. D. Martin.
That collection, along with Perue’s own 70-year career as a printer/publisher/editor/writer/collector is a rich repository that Dick has used for his books and articles over the years.
Cowboy State Daily readers are in for a grassroots history lesson with every one of his articles. Perue is a member of the Wyoming Press Association Hall of Fame.
In less than a year, Cowboy State Daily has become one of the great publishers of history of the American West. I’m so proud and pleased to be a part of the crew that generates these stories of the West.
Thanks for reading; We have a lot more coming in 2025. Happy New Year.
Candy Moulton can be reached at Candy.L.Moulton@gmail.com
