One of the most interesting things about working with history is how much of it we’ll never actually see.  We have studio portraits of Texas Jack and Buffalo Bill, a handful of stage shots with Morlacchi, and the occasional lucky outdoor photograph. But the larger world they moved through—their rides, their performances, their campfire hours—lives mostly in written accounts. That’s where the new Nano Banana Pro, running through Google’s Gemini, turns into a surprisingly helpf

A Newly Discovered Photograph of Texas Jack Junior and the Mexican Joe Show Company Every so often, I open my email and find that history surprises me with something truly remarkable. Last week, I got an email from Don Arth, who shared this image with me and graciously allowed me to share it with you. This newly uncovered photograph, shared here publicly for the first time, captures Texas Jack Junior and fellow performers from the Mexican Joe Show Company, taken around 1886,

Back in August of 2017, I made the trip to Cody, Wyoming, for the Buffalo Bill Centennial Symposium at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. I had just finished the first draft of my book on Texas Jack Omohundro and was trying to find a publisher. That evening’s keynote speaker was historian and author Paul Andrew Hutton , whose book The Apache Wars  I had brought with me, hoping to have him sign it. After his talk, I had the chance to meet him and tell him about the project I

Before Texas Jack was a cowboy legend, he was John Baker Omohundro. And before he was synonymous with the Lone Star State, he was a boy from Virginia — born July 26, 1846, in Palmyra, 50 miles as the crow flies northwest of Richmond. He earned the name “Texas Jack” years later, after driving longhorn cattle across the plains and scouting alongside Buffalo Bill Cody and Wild Bill Hickok. But no matter how far he roamed, from the open range of Texas to the vast prairies of Neb