Steve Shaw, creator and owner of Great American Adventures, 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 “background” 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.

His love of the Old West was rekindled when, around the mid-1990s, he discovered the Single Action Shooting Society (SASS), a competitive shooting organization based on shooting guns of the Old West, in Southern California.   Steve's SASS alias was easy - Ellsworth!

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, and other numerous television and film productions. 

More recently, 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."

Wanting to do more than just write about Old West adventures, Steve was soon traveling to be part of the action … such as riding in Wyoming at the Hole-in-the-Wall location where Butch, Sundance and their Wild Bunch hid out.

Steve’s wife, Marcie, was childhood friends of the Captain of the Delta Queen Steamboat and she mentioned it would be fun traveling the Mississippi River on a steamboat (after all, Steve owed her since she rode in Wyoming for five days with him, camping out (for the first time in her life) each night).  Cruising on this historic paddlewheel and wearing 19th Century period-correct clothing, Steve had a brainstorm … if they were having this much fun, why wouldn’t others?

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 (heck, even Wyatt Earp went there).  His train trip to the Canadian Rockies has become a favorite and his horseback rides are as historical as possible. 

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 7^th Cavalry’s barracks at Fort Abraham Lincoln (a 1^st 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 - but with modern conveniences - perfectly fits the era he attempts to create - our camping out is more like a Cowboy Safari).  "Wyatt Earp's Vendetta Ride" has become extremely popular and full of the history of Tombstone, the Earp's, and the Cow-boys.  "Billy the Kid's Regulator Ride," new for 2011, will be 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 Ford's Monument Valley, the Indian War period and more.

Although not mandatory (but strongly suggested), many of Steve’s clients and friends dress in 19th Century Victorian clothing during the bus tours, cruises and train trips.  Old West cowboy period clothing, gun leather and firearms are certainly welcomed and encouraged on his Historic Old West Horseback Rides. 

Want a memorable vacation of a lifetime? 

Take a Great American Adventure!