The Amon Carter Museum has a web feature called “Texas Bird’s-Eye Views” that features some really nice maps of various Texas towns from 1871-1892. While they are behind a Flash-based map viewer at the website, many of them are also on Wikimedia Commons.

After the Civil War there was an explosion in panoramic or bird’s-eye view city maps. The techniques and technology were sufficiently advanced to produce beautiful works of art. There is a detailed article on Bird’s Eye View map phenomenon at the Anon Carter site.

Below are some samples:
Austin, 1873.
Austin, 1887.
Eagle Pass, 1887.
Fort Worth, 1876.
Fort Worth, 1886.
Fort Worth, 1891.
McKinney, 1876.

All told there are 60 maps on the Amon Carter site, and many are also available on Wikimedia Commons and these are only for Texas towns. I’m sure with some digging we can find more primary source maps of Old West towns, in fact you can count on it.

For my first real post at The Depot, I thought we’d go for something free and immediately helpful.

Colin Chapman’s Western Gear Archive,
lodged at Uncle Bear’s place.

There are four PDFs:
Western Handguns
Western Handguns II
Western Rifles
Western Shotguns

Each entry has a picture and some basic facts about the firearm. These are a great resource for helping you see what, for instance, a Forehand & Wadsworth Swamp Angel looks like in addition to knowing that it held 5 .41 long rounds and cost $14.00.

While you’re at Uncle Bear’s place, take a look at some of his other downloads (including a full line of Pulp Gear Archives).

An Inagural Post
The Depot is not the product of a lot of deep thinking and reflection. It was not market tested or focus grouped.

I was looking for any Western RPG sources I could get my hands on as inspiration for a Western game I was going to run. As I looked through RPGNow and IPR undet the “Western” heading, I realized that there was a decent amount of material out there. And this only scratched the surface. There’s the source material from books and movies to actual history and historical photographs. All of these resources for Western RPGs…and no central collection. No EnWorld or Story-games for Western RPGs. Maybe Western RPGs are too narrow a genre to have their own forum. But a blog or wiki? That makes sense.

I opted for a blog for a couple of reasons. As long as I keep updating it, a blog grows in usefulness. Without a good deal of material up front a wiki makes a bad impression–regardless of how much one adds later.

I aim to do a good job of categorizing the entries so they can be found when you need them. I’m going to cover anything a Western RPG player would find useful.

One more thing…
I am not my kind of expert on the Old West. I haven’t read every Louis L’Amour or Zane Gray or Ralph Cotton book. I haven’t seen many classic Westerns. But I love the genre and will be learning and sharing as I go.