The Territory Map

A stylized frontier map — not to precise geographic scale — marking the towns, forts, trails, and battle sites where the archive's figures lived, fought, and died.

town

Abilene, Kansas

Rowdy cattle-trail terminus where Hickok served as town marshal.

landmark

Black Hills

Sacred Lakota land, guaranteed by treaty in 1868 and seized after gold was discovered in 1874.

landmark

Bosque Redondo

Internment camp where thousands of Navajo people suffered after the Long Walk of 1864.

landmark

Chiricahua Apache Homeland

Ancestral homeland fought over for decades by Cochise and Geronimo.

trail

Chisholm Trail

Primary cattle-drive route from Texas to Kansas railheads.

town

Darke County, Ohio

Birthplace of Annie Oakley.

town

Deadwood, Dakota Territory

Lawless gold-camp where Wild Bill Hickok was killed and Calamity Jane made her name.

town

El Paso, Texas

Site of John Wesley Hardin's killing in the Acme Saloon in 1895.

fort

Fort Lyon, Colorado

Site of Kit Carson's death in 1868.

fort

Fort Sill, Oklahoma

Geronimo's final home as a prisoner of war after 1894.

fort

Fort Smith, Arkansas

Base of Judge Isaac Parker's federal court and Bass Reeves's operations.

fort

Fort Sumner

Site of Billy the Kid's death at the hands of Pat Garrett in 1881.

town

Hays City, Kansas

trail

Indian Territory

Vast, lawless jurisdiction Bass Reeves patrolled for over three decades.

town

Kearney, Missouri

Birthplace of Jesse James.

town

Lincoln, New Mexico

Site of the brutal Lincoln County War that launched Billy the Kid's outlaw career.

battle site

Little Bighorn River

Site of Custer's total defeat by combined Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho forces in 1876.

town

Muskogee, Oklahoma

Bass Reeves's final years as a municipal police patrolman.

landmark

North Platte, Nebraska

Home base of Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West touring show.

battle site

Northfield, Minnesota

Site of the catastrophic 1876 bank raid that shattered the James-Younger gang.

battle site

O.K. Corral

Site of the thirty-second gunfight between the Earps and the Clanton-McLaury faction.

trail

Oregon Trail

The great overland emigrant route to the Pacific Northwest.

trail

Santa Fe Trail

Vital commercial route connecting Missouri to the Southwest.

town

St. Joseph, Missouri

Site of Jesse James's assassination by Robert Ford in 1882.

landmark

Standing Rock Agency

Reservation where Sitting Bull lived his final years and was killed in 1890.

town

Taos, New Mexico

Kit Carson's home base for most of his adult life.

town

Tombstone, Arizona

Silver boomtown and site of the gunfight near the O.K. Corral.

battle site

Wounded Knee

Site of the 1890 massacre that closed the era of armed Native resistance on the northern plains.