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Who in America hasn't heard of Billy The Kid. One of the greatest desperado's of the American West. As with most great Old West stories, the legend far exceeds the reality, but the history is fun. Billy operated in southeastern New Mexico and in the context of something called the Lincoln County War. Lincoln, New Mexico, the "L" stop in this week's Alphabet Soup is the county seat and where a lot of the action happened. It's a ghost town these days, part of a state park, and a great place to visit.

Like most Frontier towns defense was a priority and this tower was a part of that. Indian raids were common early on and this tower provided defense against such. Most of it is a reconstruction, but it is one of the better sites in town.

But the real story in Lincoln is the wars. They were basically about control of commercial activity in the territory, before statehood. The two primary protagonists were John Tunstall, the guy that was moving in, and Lawrence Murphy.

Murphy had a monopoly on retail in the region until Tunstall set up this store as competition. Murphy did not like the competition so he had Tunstall killed.

Tunstall had taken in many ranch hands and tried to improve their lives, teaching them to read and so forth. But alas some were less stable than others, like say Billy Bonnie, AKA the Kid. Revenge became the order of the day and the war was on.

Some of the most famous names in the West were involved, John Chisholm -- the John Wayne movie "Chisholm" is one of the many movie tellings of the war -- Pat Garrett -- "Young Guns" and "Young Guns II" are movies that look at the wars too, particularly from the standpoint of the Kid and Garrett. "Young Guns II" addresses the legend that the Kid actually survivied the wars and died an old man in Texas.

Much of Lincoln survives. This is the interior of the Tunstall store. One of several museums in town dedicated to trying to give you the complete story of what really happened.

Probably the essential debate in the whole affair has to do with whether the Kid was a good guy or a bad guy. Most historians answer that he was justified in his pursuit of Murphy, but his problems came later when he kept fighting even though a truce had more or less ensued.

At one point the Kid was actually taken into custody and jailed pending trial. Arraigned in front of the bench you see here, in the courthouse just a block away from the store, where he would also have stood trial. While in jail, he became convinced that conviction and punishment awaited him and staged a remarkable and murderous escape from this very building. There was no turning back at that point.

I have visited a number of ghost towns, and especially ones with big legends attached. Lincoln is a great one, maybe the best. Not grossly commericalized like Tombstone, you get a real feel for the actual history, a history every bit as exciting as the legend. It's in the middle of nowhere, but Lincoln, New Mexico is high on my list of places to visit if you love the Old West.