On Nov. 1, 1914, Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim set the record straight in an article for The New York Times titled “‘How I Invented Maxim Gun' — Hiram Maxim. Outbreak of World-War Moves Veteran American Inventor to Describe for The Times His Epoch-Making ...
Americana
Off Script: Free Range Q&A With Dave Jewett, Timbersports Legend
Dave Jewett does not have a blue ox that follows him around, but he's as much a giant in the Timbersports world as Paul Bunyan is in American folklore. What started as a sure, why not? moment when he joined a junior-college woodsmen team in 1987 ...
Lesser-Known Bigfoot Legends in The US and Around the World
Ask any bar full of townies in any semiremote region of the world if there’s such a thing as Bigfoot, and they'll probably give a guarded side glance to the grizzled old-timer sitting alone with his whiskey. He’s seen things that no one will say they ...
Aldo Leopold: A Conservationist’s Life in Pictures
On a bench along the Wisconsin River sat Aldo Leopold, a revered conservationist and outspoken advocate for wildlife science. On any given day in the late 1930s, Leopold, although in poor health, would venture to his writing haven he and his ...
For A Custom Motorcycle Build, Visit New York’s Interstellar Motors
Walking down a second-floor hallway of a decades-closed post office to the Interstellar Motors custom motorcycle shop, the last thing you’d expect to see is ballet studios with handmade welcome signs and a dozen moms shepherding pint-sized darlings ...
Boat Building: Pat Smith’s Handcrafted Cedar-Canvas Canoes
Pat Smith’s boat shop is not a place for those with OCD. One step inside and you get the smell of Captain Black pipe tobacco, cedar sawdust, epoxy, and varnish. "A Whiter Shade of Pale" drifts from the transistor radio in the back of the ...
Forging Forward: Lucas O’Hara Finds Success in Blacksmithing
Veterans transitioning to civilian life possess many marketable skills, but Lucas O’Hara credits blacksmithing for forging his path to success. On a recent episode of Free Range American with Evan Hafer and Trevor Thompson, the Grizzly Forge ...
Monarch Butterflies, On Brink of Extinction, Garner Congressional Attention
The western monarch butterfly — the iconic creature that’s a universal beacon in generations of childhood memories across the country — is but a wing-flap away from disappearing completely. The literal butterfly effect of this could further ...
Growing Up Heathen: A Look Into One Outlaw Motorcycle Club Family
Jim Rayel’s grandfather, Bob Rayel, was the vice president of the Heathens Motorcycle Club in Reading, Pennsylvania, in the 1960s. He rode an American-made Triumph, wore a steel German army helmet, and had a rebel streak with scrap to match. As ...
Sporting Art: Zippo Lighters Designed with the Outdoors in Mind
Early man in Africa and Eurasia first harnessed the power of fire 2 million years ago, discovering its usefulness for not only warmth and light but also protection from predators — and the ability to cook food. The earliest cave paintings, ...
6 Crazy Facts About the Man-Eating Lions of Tsavo
The sounds of drilling and blasting amid the big rock cliffs over the Tsavo River for the Kenya-Uganda Railroad didn’t scare off the big cats of Africa — it did just the opposite. At night when the bridge construction stopped, and the laborers ...
Portraits of Strength: The Unseen Suffragist Photographs
In December 2020, David Whitcomb, an attorney in Canandaigua, New York, bought a historic building in neighboring Geneva. While renovating the space for a new office, he discovered a secret attic that held a trove of old photographs, props, and early ...
Back from the brink: The fall and resurgence of the American bison
The American West once had its own sea: A great, sweeping, endless ocean of waving grasslands, expanding across the western United States from Canada to Mexico. It was a vast land of pristine and fertile ground, stretching off from horizon to ...
Balto: The True Story of the Alaskan Super Dog Who Helped Save the Children of Nome
Balto, the Alaskan super dog with the voice of Kevin Bacon, was an outcast wolf-dog living in Nome, Alaska, who just wanted to be accepted by his local canine buddies. Then, adventure strikes, and he finds himself swept up in a treacherous ...
American Railroad: Is There a Future for Trains in a Changing Nation?
It’s a dreary winter afternoon in Huron, South Dakota. Standing in his safety gear — hard hat, coveralls, harness — mechanic John Tapken is ready to get back to work on trains. It’s a few hours past lunchtime, but the day is far ...
How One Woman Found Her Calling as a Long Haul Trucker
TJ O’Shea attracts the occasional odd look as she steps down from the cab of her big rig in a skirt, combat boots, Waxtrax hoodie, and fedora. She could be anywhere from Florida to Idaho, spending 14-hour days listening to audiobooks while flying ...
Meet Nat Love, the Most Famous Black Cowboy of the American Frontier
If Nat Love hadn’t learned how to read and write, then we’d never know one of the greatest Black heroes of the American frontier. We wouldn’t have learned his firsthand account of life growing up as a slave. We wouldn’t have the perspective of one of ...
5 of the Wildest Presidential Pets To Stay at the White House
If you’re expecting a list of all the presidents’ doggos and good boys, this isn’t the place for that. The most common presidential pets to have blessed the hallowed White House grounds have been dogs, cats, birds, and horses. Even President Joe ...
6 Reasons America’s First Daredevil Is a Dude Worth Remembering
Long before Evel Knievel, Travis Pastrana, or Smagical, Sam Patch was launching off Niagara Falls for money, wowing crowds, and, notably, not dying in the process. America’s first daredevil was the original extreme sports badass — and here are six ...
Tom Crean: 5 Facts About the Most Badass Explorer You’ve Never Heard Of
Rugged and tough, athletic and gritty, with a tobacco pipe clenched between his teeth, Tom Crean was the toughest Antarctic explorer you’ve never heard of. He spent more days in Antarctica than both Ernest Shackleton and Robert Falcon Scott. His crew ...
Carl Akeley: The Father of Modern Taxidermy
Carl Akeley had never been to Africa. Daniel Elliot, one of Akeley’s mentors and the curator for the zoology department of the Field Columbian Museum in Chicago, invited the 32-year-old in 1896 on an eight-month expedition to Somaliland. Akeley ...
Mountaineering in a Skirt: 4 Trailblazing Female Climbers
Sexism and ill-suited clothing didn’t stop these four 19th-century women from achieving greatness in mountaineering. One climbed two dozen peaks that hadn’t yet been named, most of them while wearing a wool skirt. Another bicycled up mountains ...
The True Story Behind ‘Jeremiah Johnson’: What We Know (and Don’t)
Back in the frontier days, it was not uncommon for the lives and deeds of famous gunfighters and personalities of the Wild West to be greatly exaggerated in newspaper stories and dime novels, until an entire alternate, bloviated life history attached ...
The Trailblazer Who Pioneered Prospecting in the Canadian Wilderness
Conformity wasn’t an accepted word in the vocabulary of Kate Rice. The blond beauty had all the basics and intangibles to lead a safe and risk-averse life. She was born to wealthy parents, but her father, Henry Lincoln Rice, may be to blame for ...
4 Little-Known and Unusual Stories from Past US Presidential Elections
Election years throughout the more than 200-year history of the United States are often rife with contention, political upheaval, social unrest, and surprise. On Jan. 7, 1789, Congress required state electors for the nation's first presidential ...
Blood Brothers: Theodore Roosevelt and Frederick Selous
Nineteen days after leaving the White House and his second term as president, Theodore Roosevelt kissed his wife goodbye. He boarded a train in Oyster Bay with his son Kermit, bound for a steamship, bound for Africa. Roosevelt was embarking on a ...
John Wesley Powell’s Geographic Expedition of 1869: The Discovery of the Grand Canyon
Four fragile wooden rowboats, 10 months’ worth of provisions, and 10 courageous men set out on May 24, 1869, on an audacious expedition from the Union Pacific’s Green River Station in Wyoming en route for the “Great Unknown,” the last unexplored ...
Watch: 19th Anniversary of the Sept. 11 Terrorist Attacks
Those of us who are old enough to remember it happening no doubt have vivid memories of Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001. Four commercial airliners were hijacked by terrorists — two targeted New York City, crashing into the north and south towers of the World ...
Catching Waves on Camp Pendleton: Surfing Culture Provides Community of Strength
It is common knowledge that nearly all Marine Corps duty stations are next to the ocean, and that surfing comes with the territory. With surfing comes a community strengthened by a shared desire to be mentally, emotionally, and physically strong, ...
No Dog Gets Left Behind: Reuniting Service Members who Bonded with Stray Dogs
Deployed service members can find themselves in a range of situations. Some face life-threatening decisions every single day, while others deal with endless days of severe boredom. Some are firing rifles, others are turning wrenches, and others are ...
