Three cowboy romances in one collection for the first time by New York Times bestselling author Diana Palmer, Lindsay McKenna, and Marin Thomas. The Rancher by Diana Palmer Cort Brannt, the heir to the Skylance Ranch empire, has women gallop into his life, but the handsome lone wolf sends them just as quickly on their way…until a pretty, vivacious neighbor appears on the range. Has the most eligible bachelor in Branntville, Texas met his match? The Last Cowboy by Lindsay McKenna City girl. It was written all over her like a sign warning him to keep off. Sure, Slade McPherson would train her horse…With his ranch close to foreclosure, he can't afford to turn away a paying customer. But no way is this cowboy getting involved with a woman like Jordana Lawton—no matter how pretty she looks in a saddle. Yet everything can change in an instant. A terrifying run-in with an angry bull leaves him wounded and unable to compete in a race that could change his future. With Jordana by his side, he might stand a chance. But what happens when this old-school cowboy finds himself falling for a modern city girl? A Cowboy's Redemption by Marin Thomas Cruz Rivera is on his last chance. He can't afford to blow it by falling for the beautiful blonde who just hired him to fix up her family's New Mexico property. If he's going to get back on the rodeo circuit, Cruz needs to focus. Besides, a sweet single mom like Sara Mendez can do better than someone with Cruz's troubled past.ÿSara isn't making it easy for Cruz to keep his distance. He's a man of many secrets, but Sarah sees only good in his heart. Though Cruz knows he should move on before Sara discovers the truth about his past, he can't leave the closest thing to a home he's ever known. Cruz is the only man Sara wants—can he become the one she deserves?

An easily accessible and comprehensive summary of current studies on the Canadian ranching frontier. This collection of essays provides an excellent perspective on the latest developments in the historiography of the range, drawing from topics such as Wild West shows, artistic depictions of the cowboy, and the economic and practical aspects of early cattle ranching. The essays anthologized here fall into three general areas: the working cowboy, the performing cowboy and the imaginary cowboy, and the academics, ranchers, poets and cowboys who authored them hail from backgrounds as diverse as history, geography, political science, and literature. This book makes an important contribution to the study of the ranching frontier, and will continue to be of value to researchers and readers of western history, plains studies and historical geography.

Nine novellas in one book, all dealing with cowboys and their brides.

Cowboys of the historic Waggoner Ranch are living legends.They are men who embody the attributes of dusty riders who braved the wild a century ago. The cowboys ride a vast ranch, the largest in the United States within one fence. The 510,772-acre ranch, a couple of hours northwest of Dallas/Fort Worth, was established in 1854, only nine years after Texas joined the Union. Jeremy Enlow was granted rare access to photograph the twenty-six cowboys who ride the trails of their forebearers, living a life and practicing skills that have almost disappeared. It is important to record their lives before they shut the gate behind them the last time. This book is a tribute to the cowboys of the Waggoner Ranch.

From the big picture to the smallest detail, Richard Collins fashions a rousing memoir about the modern-day lives of cowboys and ranchers. However, Cowboy is a Verb is much more than wild horse rides and cattle chases. While Collins recounts stories of quirky ranch horses, cranky cow critters, cow dogs, and the people who use and care for them, he also paints a rural West struggling to survive the onslaught of relentless suburbanization. A born storyteller with a flair for words, Collins breathes life into the geology, history, and interdependency of land, water, and native and introduced plants and animals. He conjures indelible portraits of the hardworking, dedicated people he comes to know. With both humor and humility, he recounts the day-to-day challenges of ranch life such as how to build a productive herd, distribute your cattle evenly across a rough and rocky landscape, and establish a grazing system that allows pastures enough time to recover. He also intimately recounts a battle over the endangered Gila topminnow and how he and his neighbors worked with university range scientists, forest service conservationists, and funding agencies to improve their ranches as well as the ecological health of the Redrock Canyon watershed. Ranchers who want to stay in the game don’t dominate the landscape; instead, they have to continually study the land and the animals it supports. Collins is a keen observer of both. He demonstrates that patience, resilience, and a common-sense approach to conservation and range management are what counts, combined with an enduring affection for nature, its animals, and the land. Cowboy is a Verb is not a romanticized story of cowboy life on the range, rather it is a complex story of the complicated work involved with being a rancher in the twenty-first-century West.

"To Arizona cowpunchers the Spanish word orejana refers to an ownerless, unbranded bovine old enough to quit its mother, in other words a maverick. Somehow that word evokes images of the legendary O RO Ranch north of Prescott, Arizona. This rough and remote, 257,000-acre ranch is as wild as the elusive orejanas that brush up in its precipitous canyons, evading the rope and all semblance of modern civilization. Once a Spanish Land Grant, this outfit has a tangible mystique about it that everyone who ever worked or lived here feels. Journalist and photographer Kathy McCraine is one of very few people ever allowed to photograph on this iconic ranch, which is locked to the public. From 1993 to 2013 she made numerous trips to the headquarters and to the remote areas on the ranch where the roundup wagon camped. Her unstaged photos depict the everyday lives of some of the last of the real, big outfit cowboys, at work catching horses out of the remuda, dragging calves to the fire for branding, and breaking broncs." --

Viewers of films and television shows might imagine the dude ranch as something not quite legitimate, a place where city dwellers pretend to be cowboys in amusingly inauthentic fashion. But the tradition of the dude ranch, America’s original western vacation, is much more interesting and deeply connected with the culture and history of the American West. In American Dude Ranch, Lynn Downey opens new perspectives on this buckaroo getaway, with all its implications for deciphering the American imagination. Dude ranching began in the 1880s when cattle ranches ruled the West. Men, and a few women, left the comforts of their eastern lives to experience the world of the cowboy. But by the end of the century, the cattleman’s West was fading, and many ranchers turned to wrangling dudes instead of livestock. What began as a way for ranching to survive became a new industry, and as the twentieth century progressed, the dude ranch wove its way into American life and culture. Wyoming dude ranches hosted silent picture shoots, superstars such as Gene Autry were featured in dude film plots, fashion designers and companies like Levi Strauss & Co. replicated the films’ western styles, and novelists Zane Grey and Mary Roberts Rinehart moved dude ranching into popular literature. Downey follows dude ranching across the years, tracing its influence on everything from clothing to cooking and showing how ranchers adapted to changing times and vacation trends. Her book also offers a rare look at women’s place in this story, as they found personal and professional satisfaction in running their own dude ranches. However contested and complicated, western history is one of America’s national origin stories that we turn to in times of cultural upheaval. Dude ranches provide a tangible link from the real to the imagined past, and their persistence and popularity demonstrate how significant this link remains. This book tells their story—in all its familiar, eccentric, and often surprising detail.

“Thompson-Hernández's portrayal of Compton's black cowboys broadens our perception of Compton's young black residents, and connects the Compton Cowboys to the historical legacy of African Americans in the west. An eye-opening, moving book.”—Margot Lee Shetterly, New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Figures “Walter Thompson-Hernández has written a book for the ages: a profound and moving account of what it means to be black in America that is awe inspiring in its truth-telling and limitless in its empathy. Here is an American epic of black survival and creativity, of terrible misfortune and everyday resilience, of grace, redemption and, yes, cowboys.”— Junot Díaz, Pulitzer prize-winning author of This is How You Lose Her A rising New York Times reporter tells the compelling story of The Compton Cowboys, a group of African-American men and women who defy stereotypes and continue the proud, centuries-old tradition of black cowboys in the heart of one of America’s most notorious cities. In Compton, California, ten black riders on horseback cut an unusual profile, their cowboy hats tilted against the hot Los Angeles sun. They are the Compton Cowboys, their small ranch one of the very last in a formerly semirural area of the city that has been home to African-American horse riders for decades. To most people, Compton is known only as the home of rap greats NWA and Kendrick Lamar, hyped in the media for its seemingly intractable gang violence. But in 1988 Mayisha Akbar founded The Compton Jr. Posse to provide local youth with a safe alternative to the streets, one that connected them with the rich legacy of black cowboys in American culture. From Mayisha’s youth organization came the Cowboys of today: black men and women from Compton for whom the ranch and the horses provide camaraderie, respite from violence, healing from trauma, and recovery from incarceration. The Cowboys include Randy, Mayisha’s nephew, faced with the daunting task of remaking the Cowboys for a new generation; Anthony, former drug dealer and inmate, now a family man and mentor, Keiara, a single mother pursuing her dream of winning a national rodeo championship, and a tight clan of twentysomethings--Kenneth, Keenan, Charles, and Tre--for whom horses bring the freedom, protection, and status that often elude the young black men of Compton. The Compton Cowboys is a story about trauma and transformation, race and identity, compassion, and ultimately, belonging. Walter Thompson-Hernández paints a unique and unexpected portrait of this city, pushing back against stereotypes to reveal an urban community in all its complexity, tragedy, and triumph. The Compton Cowboys is illustrated with 10-15 photographs.

Who were the black cowboys? They were drovers, foremen, fiddlers, cowpunchers, cattle rustlers, cooks, and singers. They worked as wranglers, riders, ropers, bulldoggers, and bronc busters. They came from varied backgrounds—some grew up in slavery, while free blacks often got their start in Texas and Mexico. Most who joined the long trail drives were men, but black women also rode and worked on western ranches and farms. The first overview of the subject in more than fifty years, Black Cowboys in the American West surveys the life and work of these cattle drivers from the years before the Civil War through the turn of the twentieth century. Including both classic, previously published articles and exciting new research, this collection also features select accounts of twentieth-century rodeos, music, people, and films. Arranged in three sections—“Cowboys on the Range,” “Performing Cowboys,” and “Outriders of the Black Cowboys”—the thirteen chapters illuminate the great diversity of the black cowboy experience. Like all ranch hands and riders, African American cowboys lived hard, dangerous lives. But black drovers were expected to do the roughest, most dangerous work—and to do it without complaint. They faced discrimination out west, albeit less than in the South, which many had left in search of autonomy and freedom. As cowboys, they could escape the brutal violence visited on African Americans in many southern communities and northern cities. Black cowhands remain an integral part of life in the West, the descendants of African Americans who ventured west and helped settle and establish black communities. This long-overdue examination of nineteenth- and twentieth-century black cowboys ensures that they, and their many stories and experiences, will continue to be known and told.

Describes in texts and illustrations the development of large ranches in the western plains, the impact of these establishments on the economy of the area, their organization, and some famous ranches and their owners.