He was the son of Thomas E. Burns (1837–1908), a colonel in the Union Army during the American Civil War.
In 1900, he moved to Chicago, Illinois, and began a career as a journalist, literary critic and crime reporter.
After World War I, Burns retired as a reporter, then concentrated his writing about Western American legends.
[4] Mark J. Dworkin (1946–2012) compiled a biography about Walter Noble Burns, entitled American Mythmaker: Walter Noble Burns and the Legends of Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp, and Joaquín Murrieta.
Dworkin died in 2012, prior to the completion of this book, which was published in 2015 by the University of Oklahoma Press.