The Great Range Wars: Violence on the Grasslands

Harry Sinclair Drago writes with authority and a sense of drama about the bloodiest range conflicts in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Montana late in the nineteenth century. He details the background and events surrounding the Lincoln County War of New Mexico (1878–81), a violent struggle for economic supremacy between cattle barons and merchants; the ironically named Pleasant Valley War of Arizona (1886–92), a conflict between cattlemen and sheepmen complicated by personal vendettas and old family rivalries; and the Johnson County War of Wyoming (1892), a folly that turned bloody when big cattlemen rode against suspected and known thieves with orders to shoot.