Here's a sampling of High Plains titles on Wyoming and the West: history, outlaws and lawmen, women, poetry, memoirs, and other perspectives of the West. For more information click on the image of the book.
Follow the Boys of Company K to Wyoming during the Civil War.
The inside story of the life of Butch Cassidy.
Poems that will change the way the world looks at women in ranching.
A side of the military you never read about the official U.S. Army Laundresses.
Did Tom Horn commit the murder of 14-year-old Willie Nickell for which he was hanged?
The story of the horse that became the symbol of Wyoming
Frontiersman Biography
A road trip for a cause...on a donkey.
Author Bill Betenson grew up hearing family stories around the campfire about his famous uncle Robert LeRoy Parker, better known as the outlaw Butch Cassidy. Betenson has spent decades asking questions about the life and exploits of Butch Cassidy. He presents new details, raises questions, challenges old assumptions, and presents informed interpretations.
For this book, the author focuses his attention on the time Butch Cassidy spent in Wyoming, starting in 1889 when he hightailed it north to Wyoming after robbing his first bank. The book details Butch’s escapades, rustling and robberies, capture, trials, and imprisonment until his pardon in 1896. It follows Butch to the Southwest where he was the mastermind behind other Wyoming robberies before he set sail for Argentina with the Sundance Kid and Etta Place. Some believe Butch returned to Wyoming to visit with old friends beginning around 1925.
The Old West stories that hold our attention the longest, even decades after the facts, are those with unanswered questions. Butch Cassidy’s story is full of contradictions, aliases, and mysteries. It’s also filled with fascinating men and women who lived in a very different rough-and-tumble world.
Betenson has tracked down old accounts, descendants of Butch’s cohorts, records from dusty courthouses, and seldom seen photographs. He’s traveled all over the West and visited Argentina to stand in the doorway of the cabin where Butch, Sundance, and Etta lived.
Now he turns his considerable mastery to Butch’s Wyoming days, perhaps the most engrossing period of a captivating life.
W.J. (Bill) Betenson lives in the West and grew up hearing family stories about his great uncle Butch Cassidy from a young age. He remembers attending a family premiere showing of the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid at age four—a memory that has stuck with him for over fifty years.
Butch Cassidy, The Wyoming Years is Bill’s second book. He has appeared in a number of TV documentaries on Butch Cassidy and has written several articles in historical journals and magazines.
Bill has traveled all over the West chasing down clues on his uncle. He has spoken about Butch throughout the West and continues to do so.
He has a degree in Mechanical Engineering and has worked in the oil and gas industry for over thirty years.
Bill is married to the former Elizabeth Amott, and they have four grown children and four grandchildren with the hope of more to come. He enjoys fly fishing, especially in Wyoming, and shooting historic guns.
Will Rogers Medallion Award Western Biography 3rd Place