The names “Smith” and “Wesson” sound as natural together as Lewis and Clark or Tom and Jerry. The S&W brand has been a mainstay of the modern gun world practically since it began in the 19th century. It can be easy to forget the gun-building ...
Americana
1947 Texas City Disaster: The Deadliest Industrial Accident in US History
On the morning of April 16, 1947, a fire broke out in the hold of a cargo ship docked at the Port of Texas City. Crowds of spectators gathered to watch firefighters work and to watch oddly colored smoke plume from the ship. Then, in an instant, they ...
Forest Service Retires Last Cobra Attack Helicopters Used for Wildfire Ops
The sound of rotor chop fills the sky, sending choking-thick smoke in tight-whipped swirls. Fire cracks and races furnace-hot below, consuming trees, vegetation, and structures, chasing animals, and forcing people to run panicked with what little ...
Mountain Man Seth Kinman: A Legendary Hunter with Presidential Pals
The early 19th century was an era of explorers, hunters, tall tales, and the mountain man. No one personifies all of that better than Seth Kinman. If you've never heard of him, sit back and get ready for a hell of a story about a legendary hunter, ...
More American Monsters: 5 Creepy Creatures Made in the USA
The United States is a large and diverse nation with a rich tapestry of folklore to call its own. Some of it is mystical and whimsical, some of it is terrifying. While a few local legends that make the ol’ neck hair stand on end have roots in other ...
Quill Master Hand Crafts Gear The Native American Way
A lot of people think of beadwork as being the quintessential Native American decorative art, but long before Europeans brought glass beads to these shores, tribal artists were crafting beautifully decorated clothing and objects. The media they ...
American Monsters: 5 Terrifying, US-Made Original Horrors
You’re alone on a country road covered in fog with no phone and no gun. The piercing cry of something — not animal, not human — sounds in the distant darkness. A chill runs through your veins as your mind conjures up images of cursed forest-dwelling ...
What Happened to William Clark After the Lewis and Clark Expedition?
William Clark may be best remembered for his pivotal role as half of the team behind the Lewis and Clark Expedition, but the 30 years of his life that bookended his time with the Corps of Discovery were just as exciting. In addition to charting a ...
How Western Legend Wild Bill Hickok Died in Deadwood
James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok is remembered for several things: his famous nickname, his proficiency with his signature nickel-and-ivory Colt Model 1851 Navy revolvers, and the final hand he was dealt in poker that directly preceded his coldblooded ...
The Death of Big Jake, the World’s Tallest Horse
Remember on Parks and Rec how everyone in the little Indiana town was in love with a miniature horse named Little Sebastian? It was kind of like that for the past 20 years, but in reverse, for residents of a little town in Wisconsin and their beloved ...
Sperry Ranch: A Story of a Modern American Cowboy Family
More than a century after Theodore Roosevelt’s experiences in the Wild West, the spirit of the cattlemen and cowboys remains strong as ever among the ranching families of the Upper Midwest — as it does on Sperry Ranch. The Sperrys are a great ...
Backcountry Flyers: 6 Classic Bush Planes That Get Us Out There
Backcountry flight in a proper bush plane will make you wonder what the hell you’ve been doing with your life. From the first revolution of the propeller blade to the muffled thrum vibrating through your body as wilderness sprawls in every ...
Badlands of N. Dakota Made Roosevelt One of the Greatest US Presidents
On Sept. 7, 1883, Theodore Roosevelt, an up-and-coming politician with pronounced eyeglasses and a gregarious personality, stepped off a Northern Pacific Railway train headed westward to the Little Missouri settlement of the Dakota ...
How Charles ‘Minnie’ Dole Created the National Ski Patrol
In the winter of 1936, Charles “Minnie” Dole, a veteran and outdoors enthusiast, recognized a problem. On a skiing trip on the Toll Road at Mount Mansfield in Vermont, Dole fell and broke an ankle. His friend and fellow skier, Frank Edson, assisted ...
Sky Cowboys: Irish and Native American Ironworkers Changed America
The best part of ironworking is the view. At least that’s what the men who fearlessly live their lives on the beam have said. For most onlookers, scaling the skeleton of a skyscraper that reaches 1,400 feet above the pavement may seem death-defying, ...
The Real-Life Outlaws Behind ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid hit the silver screen in 1969 and revived the guns-blazing legacy of two iconic outlaws of the American West. The movie starred Paul Newman as Butch Cassidy and Robert Redford as the Sundance Kid and won four Oscars ...
Bonneville’s Fastest: Speed Record-Holders of the Flats
Unless you topped out on a motorcycle at 110 miles an hour at Bonneville at the age of 14, you don’t know shit about driving fast. That’s exactly what Karlee Cobb did in 2008 on the salt flats, and it put her squarely among some damn fast ...
Chuck Wagon: The History of America’s First Food Truck
It’s not real cowboy coffee if you can’t float a horseshoe in it. In many instances, a mug of coffee was all the cattlemen had for a meal along the trail. After a long day in the saddle, exhausted cowboys set up camp only to immediately seek refuge ...
Off Script: Free Range Q&A With Dave Jewett, Timbersports Legend
Dave Jewett does not have a blue ox that follows him around, but he's as much a giant in the Timbersports world as Paul Bunyan is in American folklore. What started as a sure, why not? moment when he joined a junior-college woodsmen team in 1987 ...
Lesser-Known Bigfoot Legends in The US and Around the World
Ask any bar full of townies in any semiremote region of the world if there’s such a thing as Bigfoot, and they'll probably give a guarded side glance to the grizzled old-timer sitting alone with his whiskey. He’s seen things that no one will say they ...
Aldo Leopold: A Conservationist’s Life in Pictures
On a bench along the Wisconsin River sat Aldo Leopold, a revered conservationist and outspoken advocate for wildlife science. On any given day in the late 1930s, Leopold, although in poor health, would venture to his writing haven he and his ...
For A Custom Motorcycle Build, Visit New York’s Interstellar Motors
Walking down a second-floor hallway of a decades-closed post office to the Interstellar Motors custom motorcycle shop, the last thing you’d expect to see is ballet studios with handmade welcome signs and a dozen moms shepherding pint-sized darlings ...
Boat Building: Pat Smith’s Handcrafted Cedar-Canvas Canoes
Pat Smith’s boat shop is not a place for those with OCD. One step inside and you get the smell of Captain Black pipe tobacco, cedar sawdust, epoxy, and varnish. "A Whiter Shade of Pale" drifts from the transistor radio in the back of the ...
Forging Forward: Lucas O’Hara Finds Success in Blacksmithing
Veterans transitioning to civilian life possess many marketable skills, but Lucas O’Hara credits blacksmithing for forging his path to success. On a recent episode of Free Range American with Evan Hafer and Trevor Thompson, the Grizzly Forge ...
Monarch Butterflies, On Brink of Extinction, Garner Congressional Attention
The western monarch butterfly — the iconic creature that’s a universal beacon in generations of childhood memories across the country — is but a wing-flap away from disappearing completely. The literal butterfly effect of this could further ...
Sporting Art: Zippo Lighters Designed with the Outdoors in Mind
Early man in Africa and Eurasia first harnessed the power of fire 2 million years ago, discovering its usefulness for not only warmth and light but also protection from predators — and the ability to cook food. The earliest cave paintings, ...
6 Crazy Facts About the Man-Eating Lions of Tsavo
The sounds of drilling and blasting amid the big rock cliffs over the Tsavo River for the Kenya-Uganda Railroad didn’t scare off the big cats of Africa — it did just the opposite. At night when the bridge construction stopped, and the laborers ...
Portraits of Strength: The Unseen Suffragist Photographs
In December 2020, David Whitcomb, an attorney in Canandaigua, New York, bought a historic building in neighboring Geneva. While renovating the space for a new office, he discovered a secret attic that held a trove of old photographs, props, and early ...
Back from the brink: The fall and resurgence of the American bison
The American West once had its own sea: A great, sweeping, endless ocean of waving grasslands, expanding across the western United States from Canada to Mexico. It was a vast land of pristine and fertile ground, stretching off from horizon to ...
Balto: The True Story of the Child-Saving Alaskan Super Dog
Balto, the Alaskan super dog with the voice of Kevin Bacon, was an outcast wolf-dog living in Nome, Alaska, who just wanted to be accepted by his local canine buddies. Then, adventure strikes, and he finds himself swept up in a treacherous ...
