Welcome to Frontier’s winter issue! It’s the first of 2026, and if you have been subscribing for the whole first year of our run, it’s the fifth you have received. We’re deeply grateful for your real contribution to our mission: to capture the besieged American spirit in writings and in photography, to print it on heavy, quality paper, and to deliver the kind of magazine that hasn’t existed in decades.
It’s a treacherous market for the classic printed word that dominated the last century, which is why the rest are gone. But in an age of so many glowing screens and clickbait served up in exchange for stealing your browsing history and feeding you cheap ads, we’re honored to provide evenings of restful respite, artful articles, and bona fide beauty. America was defined by her frontier, just as that open space was defined by the hardy folk who left behind all they knew to make it on their own. This story is our heritage, and in these pages we seek to capture that—and push us ever forward into that great wide open.
We’ve put together a very special issue this winter to welcome new readers, thank you for your faith in us, and remind you of the kind of work you’re supporting. This issue takes a closer look at Texas—that iconic, rogue state that defines so much of what the world understands when they think “America.”
Despite its relative youth, the Lone Star State is one where old meets new, where hippies, hipsters, and cowboys brush shoulders with oilmen, lawyers, and newer arrivals from Blue America. Our writers and photographers recall the state’s proud heritage by visiting a factory in Bowie, where a 110-year-old company still handcrafts the definitive American cowboy hat. I, on the other hand, show you the contrast to rugged pride and sharp looks, walking you through the slovenly trials of modern air travel at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport and beyond.
Our managing editor shows the new, the old, and the plain strange of Dallas—a growing, international city defined as much by old-time barbecue as by an emerging global finance sector, with a sprinkling of the quirky little tourism industry catering to Kennedy assassination tourists. And John Slaughter ties the hard men who brought order to the West to the weak men who would surrender it today, with the great author Cormac McCarthy as his guide.
Over the Gulf of America and across the wine-dark Atlantic, Mike Mercury guides us through the treacherous world of Naples’ Camorra crime syndicates, leading readers through the myths and legends of its winding streets like a modern-day Virgil. For those interested in the more literal, daily realities of how our ancestors shape us, Blaze Media’s own Rebeka Zeljko shines light on the world of antique dresses. It turns out there’s a beacon of light for thrifty women who long for a day when American seamstresses made our wardrobes by hand, before anti-feminine designers, cheap plastic “fabrics,” and actual slave labor took over the marketplace.
This is also my first issue as editor-in-chief from start to finish. It’s an honor to work with this team and for you. And it’s an incredible privilege to contribute to a magazine that harkens back to an age I once thought was lost to time, where excellent writing and stunning imagery come together to pull us out of a world of doomscrolling and AI slop, back to a world where men and women tell stories.
So I hope you can take a break from your busy day and let these storytellers guide you from the twilight of Las Vegas to early-morning suburban Detroit, from idyllic New England afternoons to a day on the Apache Trail. And I hope you enjoy.
In thanks,
Chris Bedford
Editor-in-chief, Frontier
