It's hard to believe more than 2 years have passed since I first put up a Lone Ranger page in February of 1996. Thousands of hits and hundreds of e-mails later, I took a little time to look back and since I sometimes get asked why I made this page, I thought I'd cover it here.

First of all, I'm young! (Well, relatively so!) I wasn't alive when the Lone Ranger aired on the radio or TV. I discovered the Lone Ranger in re-runs in the middle 1970s. Everyone, I've found has a different experience with the Ranger. Mine was as packaged Lone Ranger "movies." These, I would later come to find, were edited-together movies made from 3 half-hour color episodes. There were 39 color episodes, making 13 movies. "The Lone Ranger" movie and "The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold" were added to make 15 movies shown in rotation. At the beginning of each movie, they used the origin sequence and "Hi-Yo, Silver" song from "The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold." It was because of this, that I started these pages.

I'll explain:

I grew up with parents in the military and moved around often. (When I watched the Lone Ranger movies, I was on Homestead AFB in Southern Florida.) A couple of years ago, I was whistling the "Hi-Yo, Silver" song and somebody asked me what it was. I said, "Oh, that's the Lone Ranger theme."

I was angrily attacked. "That's not the Lone Ranger theme, the William Tell Overture is the Lone Ranger's only theme."

This puzzled me. I went on the internet that night to find a Lone Ranger page which would explain this and not make me seem insane to everyone I knew. To my incredible surprise, there wasn't a single Lone Ranger page out there! I was flabbergasted. The only links I could find were to dirty jokes and people selling things.

The Lone Ranger was one of the all-time great American Myths! "Hi-Yo, Silver!" and "Kemosabe" were burned into the public's conscious. Yet, there was no info out there.

I was shocked and then saddened. Had people forgotten about him?

I asked a guy I knew who taught media classes and was a Lone Ranger fan about the "Hi-Yo, Silver!" song and he told me that it was from the second movie. He'd never heard of it being used on TV and amazed me by saying that the Lone Ranger had always been a 30-minute show.

To me, the Lone Ranger was an all-Saturday-afternoon affair.

I decided to put up a simple, little Lone Ranger website just to say that *I* still remembered him.

And then the mail started to come in. Only a little at first, but then it grew. I sometimes get four or five messages a day. Too many, sadly, for me to respond to everyone, but I do read them all.

Because I had the webpage, it was automatically assumed that I knew everything about the Lone Ranger. Augh! I knew next to nothing! So, I started making frequent trips to the library, reading everything I could find on the Ranger. I felt I owed it to the nice folk who were e-mailing with questions, that I find them an answer.

It's been an amazing education. As a comic-book writer, "in the hero business," as one newspaper reporter put it, I was intrigued by the Lone Ranger's power to inspire. The generations that grew up with the Lone Ranger are fanatically loyal.

And, yes, I think they are better off for it.

So, that get's me to the subject of this particular page of my site.

Now, two years later, there are lots of Lone Ranger pages. It's great to be able to go out and visit them. Since I had to do so much research, I approach any information on the series, the way a Civil War buff would if they found a Confederate Army Soldier's diary.

I wanted to add links to some of those pages, so I'm putting up this links page.

Over the years, I've had some of my pages linked-to by other pages, and although I've always been honored by it, I was usually disappointed that they just had a link with no comment on the page. I'm going to do that here. These folks have worked hard and deserve it.

Going one step further, I've come up with a nifty award that they can display at their sites that honors the hard work and service they've given all of us Lone Ranger fans.

If you have a Lone Ranger site and would like me to visit it and consider it for the award, just e-mail me with the address at mlargent@tickled-ink.com.

Okay, that's enough intro! On to the Lone Ranger pages!

	Mary Spooner's Clayton Moore Page A treat for the patient. Mrs. Spooner has compiled a whole lot of photos of Clayton Moore. She has also done what a lot of us Ranger fans only dream of doing... She's hiked up to Lone Ranger Rock! Lucky for us, she's brought back photos and shares them with us. There are some sounds, too! I love her Zorro- inspired domain name.
	Steven Jensen's Clayton Moore, The Lone Ranger! If Mr. Jensen's page had been around a few years ago, I might not have done a Lone Ranger page of my own! There's an oft- updated news section, a partial episode guide for the TV series, a list of some of the Lone Ranger collectibles, and a few photos.
	Rick Bulger's The Lone Ranger Rides Again! A nifty page worth visiting for Mr. Bulger's transcript of an interview he conducted with Clayton Moore. In it, Moore acknowledges his temporary departure from the show was over money. He also states that he designed the look of the television costume! There's also a synopsis of the first three television episodes with some screen captures.
	Cowboy Pal's Lone Ranger Page Cowboy Pal has a lot of pages about screen and radio cowboy heroes. His Lone Ranger page is a little small, but more than made up for by having real audio radio episodes of the Lone Ranger for our listening pleasure!
	The Chief Thundercloud (Victor Daniels) Website Chuck Anderson, a great friend to these pages (see the serial pages) has produced an incredibly detailed set of pages on the screen's first Tonto. I don't want to give too much away about it, but the site is filled with information on Thundercloud and chocked full of photos. A must for fans of the Lone Ranger serials and western films.

That's all for now! Check back for new pages as they are added!