In January of 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution went into effect and the sale and manufacture of intoxicating spirits was outlawed. America had officially gone “dry.” For the next thirteen years, bootleggers and big city gangsters satisfied the country’s thirst with moonshine and contraband alcohol. On the US-Mexico border, a steady stream of black market booze flowed across the Rio Grande. Tasked with combating the liquor trade in the borderlands of the American Southwest were the “line riders” of the United States Customs Service and their colleagues in the Immigration Border Patrol. From late-night shootouts on the Rio Grande and the back alleys of El Paso, Texas, to long-range horseback pursuits across the deserts of Arizona, this book tells the little-known story of the long and deadly “liquor war” on the border during the 1920s and 1930s and highlights the evolution of the Border Patrol amidst the chaos of Prohibition. Spanning a nearly twenty-year period, from the end of World War I to repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment and beyond, The Line Riders reveals an often overlooked and violent chapter in American history and introduces the officers that guarded the international boundary when the West was still wild.

This book tells the little-known story of the origins of the US Border Patrol, starting during the final days of the "Wild West" on the US-Mexico border and tracing the origins of the modern federal agency as it came into its own during the violence of the Prohibition Era in the 1920s. Given today's headlines, the Border Patrol is currently one of the most visible, and arguably controversial, agencies of the federal government. Few people, however, know the true story of how the Border Patrol came into existence. Spanning a little more than 50 years, from the Chinese Exclusion Act to the beginnings of the drug war on the border at the height of Prohibition, "The Line Riders" introduces the officers that guarded the international boundary when the West was still wild.

With his job as a line rider under threat, Mack Cambray hopes to settle down with his bride as a homesteader. However, in trying to solve the mystery of his wife's untimely death, Mack ends up in the middle of a violent range war.

Blue-blooded easterner Darren Ames knows little about the cattle trade when he sets up on the Ames Land and Cattle Company in 1877. His vast ranch will need the protection of the best line riders--honest and loyal men to protect his borders from outsiders. To his family's luck, he found the Campbells. Traditional western adventure.

Over 450 entries provide information on cowboy history, culture, and myth of both North and South America.

Line Rider is the true story of the life of Joseph Harrison Pearce (1873-1958), written by his own hand. During his lifetime, the "wild west" from the storybooks still lived and breathed in one of the last places to be modernized--Arizona.Joe, as he calls himself, took various roles throughout his adventurous life, including sheep herder, cowman, courter, tracker, line rider, and, most famously, that venerated breed of law man know as the Arizona Ranger. His story leads him to encounters with cattle rustlers, gamblers, saloons, stampedes, horse thieves, Indian trackers, outlaws, and nearly every other subject that later made its way into western legend.But this story is absolutely real, told in his own voice in vivid detail.