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Welcome to Jane Little Botkin

Welcome to Jane Little Botkin

Having scoured the West for firsthand sources in family, library, and museum collections, award-winning author Jane Little Botkin melds personal narratives of American families with compelling stories of women, miners, lawmen, and outlaws in settings rich with a history that transitions into the New West.

Welcome to Jane Little Botkin

Having scoured the West for firsthand sources in family, library, and museum collections, award-winning author Jane Little Botkin melds personal narratives of American families with compelling stories of western women, labor radicals, miners, lawmen, and outlaws in settings rich with a history that transitions into the New West.

Jane is currently researching for her new biographies--Unintended Consequences: Molly Goodnight, Orphan Mother of the Plains and Hank Boedeker, Friend of Butch Cassidy. Check here for updates.

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1 3-1-71 Wanted Miss America Pageant

Phyllis George, the Girl-Next-Door Who Became Miss America

It was her dimples that first drew my attention to the Miss America pageant. A more-than-passable piano player with wholesome beauty, Phyllis George could have been anyone’s big sister or babysitter. I watched the pageant every September along with my parents. Before Phyllis, we knew almost nothing about the contestants parading in pale rainbows of…

An old black-and-white photograph of alligators

Los Lagartos Fountain, What Happened to the San Jacinto Alligators?

(Photo El Paso Historical Society) Recently I returned to El Paso to visit my past—my classmates, Northeast El Paso’s Milagro Hills where I grew up, the Upper Valley where I last lived in the city, and, of course, Guyrex landmarks important to my newest book, The Pink Dress, Memoir of a Guyrex Girl. A pleasant…

Jane Little Botkin

El Paso, the World of Guyrex

Some folks claim that El Paso, Texas, should be El Paso, New Mexico. It’s true that the city sits in isolation from the rest of the state—635 miles from Dallas, 600 miles from Austin, and 551 miles from San Antonio. These same naysayers maintain that Midland, 306 miles away, is true West Texas, not El…