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Find out more about Steve Shaw. Type his name in the search box
Steve Shaw
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Steve Shaw, creator and owner of Great American Adventures, (see below) has had a passion for the Old West and travel since he was a small boy. Every summer he’d travel with his parents from their home in Southern California to Texas and Oklahoma to visit family, always wearing his Western clothes, his beloved cowboy hat, boots, buscadero holster rig and play-guns from his favorite TV Westerns.
Embarrassingly as it sounds, during his last year in college and having been accepted to the United States Air Forces’ Officer Training School, he and his best friend, another OTS candidate, traveled the country looking for “backgr
ound” for their homemade, thirty-minute, 8-millimeter Western called “Butch and the Kid,” patterned after Paul Newman’s and Robert Redford’s “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” You can imagine what his Air Force recruiter thought when he saw this film at Steve’s going away party!
In fact, while serving in the military, after having earned his wings and was graduating from B-52 Navigator/Bombardier School, Steve chose, of all USAF bases, the one in Rapid City, South Dakota … Ellsworth Air Force Base. Why? Because of the surrounding area’s history: the Black Hills, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and the Sioux Nation, Gold Rush, Deadwood, Wild Bill Hickok, General G. A. Custer, Wounded Knee and much more.
Steve soon gravitated to writing short stories about the Old West. In a few short years, Steve had written over 250 + articles published in various magazines, including Old West history, Western celebrity interviews, Western lifestyle events, book reviews, and fiction and nonfiction short stories. Steve was honored to be accepted to Western Writers of America, Inc., and his first novel, Beyond the Rio Grande, received an award as "Finalist, New Mexico Book Award program, 2007."
As a result of his writing, Steve was featured as a historian on the A&E Biography channel's "Doc Holliday" episode and went on to appear on the History Channel's "Wild West Tech," HBO's Deadwood series, Disney's The Lone Ranger and other numerous television and film productions.
In 2010, Steve was the Grand Prize Winner in the 2010 Short Story Fiction Competition held in New Mexico, his new home since 2006, for his story, "Soldiers, One and All." The following year his story, "PePe's Race," won second place honorsA member of Western Writers of America (WWA) and the Single Action Shooting Society (SASS), Steve Shaw’s work includes fiction and nonfiction, book reviews, and travel adventures. His articles have appeared in The Cowboy Chronicle, END of TRAIL and SHOOT magazines, and WWA’s The Roundup.
U.S. Treasury agent Jack Wood is trying to find the source of counterfeit money appearing in Texas border towns when he suddenly disappears in El Paso. The U.S. deputy treasury director informs a select group of President Ulysses S. Grant’s advisors of Wood’s disappearance and of Mexico’s possible involvement with the counterfeit money.
South of El Paso, Mexican mercenaries assemble with orders to destroy the town, seize Dallas, and hold Texas hostage until Grant exchanges the state for thousands of American lives. Grant hesitates. His administration, fraught with scandal, is not trustworthy. With the post–Civil War depression and military downsizing, America can ill-afford another war.
With instructions from Washington, a half-dozen Texas Rangers descend on El Paso, only to learn that Wood is being held captive in Mexico. With the Mexican government in revolt, crossing the Rio Grande would be considered an act of war.
Ellsworth T. Kincaid, Jack’s friend and a dime-novel celebrity, and Stetson, his beautiful female companion, learn of Wood’s whereabouts and resolve to rescue him. Crossing into Mexico, the couple penetrates the Mexican stronghold. But Stetson is apprehended, forcing Kincaid to make a stand against two hundred maniacal cutthroats.
Steve is also owner of Great American Adventures with his wife Marcie. Thus began Steve’s “Greatest Adventure” … he acquired his travel agents credentials and began offering Old West and Victorian-type adventures on bus tours, steamboats, trains, and horseback.
Since 1998 Great American Adventures has offered steamboat cruises on the Mississippi, Ohio and Cumberland Rivers (think riverboat gambler and Civil War), the Columbia River in the Northwest (think Lewis & Clark and the Fur Trade), and in Alaska (h
eck, even Wyatt Earp went there). His train trip to the Canadian Rockies, private tour of Gettysburg, and historic tour of south Texas and the Alamo (where Steve & Marcie renewed their 30th wedding anniversary vows at John Wayne's Alamo Village) were all greatly received, each becoming favorites among his friends and clientele.
His first historic horseback ride was offered in 2004 -- "Custer's Ride to Glory." From then until 2008, this ride was the epitome of historic rides, offering cavalry training school, riding with Custer and fighting Indians on Crow Indian Reservation, riding from the Crow’s Nest to Medicine Tail Coulee and, on occasion, staying at the 7th Cavalry’s barracks at Fort Abraham Lincoln (a 1st in 130 years).
Steve's love of everything Old West prompted further adventures and rides. His "Butch Cassidy's Hole-in-the-Wall Ride" (now renamed Butch Cassidy's Rustler's Rendezvous at Hole in the Wall" will the new addition of cattle herding for a few days) is an immersion into the Old West, especially if one likes to camp out (for those that don't, the 19th Century bunkhouse - with modern conveniences - perfectly fits the era he attempts to create - the camping out is more like a Cowboy Safari). "Wyatt Earp's Vendetta Ride" has become extremely popul
ar (and sanctioned by Arizona in 2011 as an Official Centennial Event) and full of the history of Tombstone, the Earp's, and the Cow-boys. "Billy the Kid's Regulator Ride," new for 2011, is as historic as the Vendetta Ride. Steve has also offered Ghost Town rides, Horsemanship Clinics, and currently has plans for rides featuring Buffalo Bill, John Wayne's Monument Valley, the Indian War period and more.
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