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Deadwood From Mt. Moriah, 1888


Ghost Cowboy is about real tales from the 19th-century American frontier, when the Old West was young. Most of the posts here are actual news items from the 1800s and early 1900s. We'll be adding "new" content every week. Travel with us and sign up for an account, and you'll be able to leave comments and post in our forums. Your trailmasters, Ken in Alabama and Dave in Virginia, don't get to saddle up and vacation out west as often as they'd like, so they started this site. Drop us a note.

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GIRL HOLDS TOWN IN TERROR


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Davenport (Iowa) Weekly Leader / March 14, 1902

Cora Chiquita, Female Desperado, Runs Amok

Santa Rosa, N.M., March 12.— The peace officers of this county are looking for Cora Chiquita, known as “Cora the Cowgirl,” who made a sensation here on Friday night by riding up and down the main street, a revolver in each hand, yelling and

"BLACK JAKE," TERROR OF THE A.T.


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Daily Iowa State Press / June 24, 1899

For Three Years His Gang of Desperadoes Has Gone Unpunished.

The man who secures the body, dead or alive, of a murdering bandit known as “Black Jake” along the frontier of the Southwest will get $5,000 cash and earn the thanks of many people and corporations in the Territories of New Mexico and Arizona.

For two years and a half a band of outlaws known as the “Black Jake” gang has robbed, marauded and murdered at intervals of a few months in widely separated and different parts of these Southwestern territories. The Southern Pacific Railroad Company has brought its most expert bandit catchers to this region from

THE SAD SEQUEL TO A RECENT ARIZONA TRAGEDY.


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DR. WILLIS'S FUNERAL.

Dispatch published in The New York Times / January 22, 1891

The funeral services over the body of Dr. George C. Willis, who was murdered by a drunken desperado in Arizona Dec. 30, were held yesterday morning at the undertaking rooms of William Coffman at 78 Greenwich Avenue, this city. Dr. Willis, who was well known in professional and social circles in New-York, went West about eight years ago to take charge of the mining interests in Arizona of Willis Sons, the organ manufacturers of London, to whom he was related. He entered upon a successful mining career of his own as well.

Grass Valley: 1866


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Grass Valley: 1866: An 1866 image from a Gems of California stereograph showing Grass Valley, from Cemetery Hill in Nevada County.An 1866 image from a Gems of California stereograph showing Grass Valley, from Cemetery Hill in Nevada County.View full image

 

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