The New Mexico Mounted Police were forged from a frontier civil crisis and hammered to life upon the anvil of necessity. The Sunshine Territory of New Mexico had become the last outlaw haven in the Southwest.
In the tradition of their red-coated namesake, the Northwest Mounted Police of Canada, this small band of range riders used their fists, guns, and brains to restore law and order during the closing years of New Mexico's territorial era. They carried their mission forward into the early days of statehood.
Hornung has spent four decades researching New Mexico's rangers and cultivating an association with family members of these lawmen of a bygone era. Mr. Hornung owns the world's largest private collection of mounted police memorabilia, and his books about the rangers are the standard on this subject.