Few historians know and love the American West better than Joe Frantz does, and few have written more critically about it. His addresses and articles, marked by both insight and charm, have brought him much acclaim, as have his books. The three thought-provoking essays in this volume are excellent examples of his work.
The first essay, "Yellowstone National Park: Genesis of an Urban Solution," was first delivered by Dr. Frantz as the Norman Furniss Lecture at Colorado State University in 1971 and was subsequently published in "Montana"" The Magazine of Western History." In it he portrays...

For fifty years the progressive Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company, popularly known as the Taft Ranch, led in the development of South Texas, and in the early twentieth century achieved national and international repute for its contributions to agriculture. The story of the ranch reaches its climax as the firm is absorbed into the community growing up around it--the same community the ranch had nurtured to an unprecedented prosperity.

In 1961 A. Ray Stephens visited Taft, Texas, and received permission to use the dust-covered records, which for thirty years had been closed to...

In late 1842, Private William Preston Stapp and about three hundred other citizens of the Republic of Texas took it upon themselves to invade Mexico. They intended to retaliate for a recent Mexican attack on San Antonio and to humiliate President Sam Houston, who had been hesitant to seek revenge.

Stapp provides a closely observed, day-by-day narrative of the disastrous adventure later known as the Mier expedition. While his style might be described as "elegantly restrained" in comparison to the literary excesses of that early Victorian age, Stapp's flair for drama and description...

The cowboy, America s most popular folk hero, appeals to millions of readers of novels, histories, biographies, and folk tales. Cowboys command a vast audience on country radio, television, and at the movies, but what exactly "is "a cowboy?
Authors Joe B. Frantz and Julian Ernest Choate, Jr., reveal the real, dyed-in-the-wool cowboy as a heroic being from the American past, who richly deserves to be understood in terms of reality, instead of myth. Here, then, is the definitive portrait of the American cowboy in frontier history and in literature reexamined, revitalized, and set in...