"The rope is 60'+ of hand braided rawhide, the chaps are chinks, the scarf-pure silk, the bit is a spade and the hats are flat! Welcome to the Great Basin! Grant Anderson and his family have been loyal hired hands to the Roberts family for many years. One long, hot summer cattle start to disappear, just a few at a time and only the most expensive Purebred Black Angus ones. Where in the world could they be going and who could be behind it? Neighborhood drama abounds in this contemporary Western Novel filled with Buckaroo culture, side plots and surprises around every corner. Just how well do you think you know your neighbors and can you even trust your own family?"

Herding cattle from horseback has been a tradition in northern Mexico and the American West since the Spanish colonial era. The first mounted herders were the Mexican vaqueros, expert horsemen who developed the skills to work cattle in the brush country and deserts of the Southwestern borderlands. From them, Texas cowboys learned the trade, evolving their own unique culture that spread across the Southwest and Great Plains. The buckaroos of the Great Basin west of the Rockies trace their origin to the vaqueros, with influence along the way from the cowboys, though they, too, have ways and customs distinctly their own. In this book, three long-time students of the American West describe the history, working practices, and folk culture of vaqueros, cowboys, and buckaroos. They draw on historical records, contemporary interviews, and numerous photographs to show what makes each group of mounted herders distinctive in terms of working methods, gear, dress, customs, and speech. They also highlight the many common traits of all three groups. This comparative look at vaqueros, cowboys, and buckaroos brings the mythical image of the American cowboy into focus and detail and honors the regional and national variations. It will be an essential resource for anyone who would know or portray the cowboy—readers, writers, songwriters, and actors among them.

A handsomely illustrated--largely color--account of the handicrafts created and used by Great Basin cowboys. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Celebrated folklorist and author Jim Hoy has spent most of his life living in the heart of the famed Flint Hills of Kansas and documenting and celebrating his fellow Kansans and plains folk. Like rounding up stray cattle in a rolling pasture, Hoy has gathered over a hundred stray stories, tales without a single theme or unified narrative, and corraled them up here for the very first time. Branding these stories in sections like Cattle Towns, Outlaws, and Cowboy Music, Hoy’s vignettes teach, excite, charm, and instill a deep pride in anyone fortunate enough to have lived on the Great Plains. In Gathering Strays, Hoy gives us a collection of stories about Kansas, the Great Plains, and Western life that reflect his life-long love of the land, experience, and history of the region. Hoy introduces us to folks like Elmer McCurdy, a failed train robber whose arsenic-embalmed body went on tour and made money for the undertaker, and Ame Cole, who scolded Russian Grand Duke Alexis on his table manners. Writing as an easygoing storyteller, Hoy covers familiar areas like rodeos and cattle drives, takes us from Dodge City to Beer City and everywhere in between, explains why Kansas has the best state song in the nation, and expands our picture of cowboys with stories of Australian drovers, Black cowboys, and Mexican vaqueros. Throughout, his easy-to-read yet authoritative style describes the people, places, and events that make the region so distinctive and celebrated. Gathering Strays will be hailed by anyone interested in the heroes and villains, towns and ranges, and myths and legends of the West.

This anthology of “Cowgirl” poets, and edited by Jill Charlotte Stanford (The Cowgirl's Cookbook, Keep Cookin' Cowgirl) features the words of a wide range of Western women poets chosen for this collection by real ranching women and cowgirls across the West as the poets whose words most speak to them and the Western experience.

ONE YEAR ON A WILDERNESS RANCH.

Ranch families in the twenty-first century face many challenges, from competition with government-subsidized agribusiness corporations to tax laws that encourage development over agriculture and prevent the smooth transfer of land from one generation to the next. As a stabilizing force in the American West, ranch families play a critical role in our country, perhaps more so today than ever before, yet their stories have rarely been told. They contribute to our nation with the food they raise, the environments they protect, and the resources they manage, and they preserve our western heritage while holding the West open for the rest of us. In The Family Ranch, award-winning author Linda Hussa offers readers a personal, inside view into the lives of six diverse ranching families and the land that shapes their days and nights. Photographer Madeleine Graham Blake provides engaging and often moving images that portray each family at work and at play. With chapters on the critical issues that face each of them—from grazing rights and water use, to children's education and the emerging rural marketplace—these family profiles are set in a larger context. This is family ranching as it is now, a tracing of how it always was, but made far more complex in modern times. By combining their traditions with the tools of modern technology, these people strengthen the ideal of family and give the business of ranching a vibrant and viable future.The Family Ranch is rich in remarkable stories of what happens when parents, children, work, and nature come together for a lifetime of commitment. It speaks to urban and rural people in important ways, illuminating the realities of the western ranch and the people who make their living, and their lives, on it. Essential reading for people who love the West and care about its future. The Family Ranch inspires thoughts about tradition, values, and responsibility that are applicable to all communities.

The dime novel and dude ranch, the barbecue and rodeo, the suburban ranch house and the urban cowboy—all are a direct legacy of nineteenth-century cowboy life that still enlivens American popular culture. Yet at the same time, reports of environmental destruction or economic inefficiency have motivated calls for restricted livestock grazing on public lands or even for an end to ranching altogether. In Let the Cowboy Ride, Starrs offers a detailed and comprehensive look at one of America's most enduring institutions. Richly illustrated with more than 130 photographs and maps, the book combines the authentic detail of an insider's view (Starrs spent six years working cattle on the high desert Great Basin range) with a scholar's keen eye for objective analysis.

Contains over 500 articles Ranging over foodways and folksongs, quiltmaking and computer lore, Pecos Bill, Butch Cassidy, and Elvis sightings, more than 500 articles spotlight folk literature, music, and crafts; sports and holidays; tall tales and legendary figures; genres and forms; scholarly approaches and theories; regions and ethnic groups; performers and collectors; writers and scholars; religious beliefs and practices. The alphabetically arranged entries vary from concise definitions to detailed surveys, each accompanied by a brief, up-to-date bibliography. Special features *More than 2000 contributors *Over 500 articles spotlight folk literature, music, crafts, and more *Alphabetically arranged *Entries accompanied by up-to-date bibliographies *Edited by America's best-known folklore authority