30 Facts About Old West

1.

Archetypical Old West period is generally accepted by historians to have occurred between the end of the American Civil War in 1865 until the closing of the Frontier by the Census Bureau in 1890.

FactSnippet No. 749,862
2.

Old West set up the American Fur Company in an attempt to break the hold that the Hudson's Bay Company monopoly had over the region.

FactSnippet No. 749,863
3.

Letters from early settlers provided information and boosterism to encourage increased migration to the Old West, helped scattered families stay in touch and provide neutral help, assisted entrepreneurs to find business opportunities, and made possible regular commercial relationships between merchants and the Old West and wholesalers and factories back east.

FactSnippet No. 749,864
4.

Old West later explored the Red and Arkansas Rivers in Spanish territory, eventually reaching the Rio Grande.

FactSnippet No. 749,865
5.

Old West displayed a talent for exploration and a genius at self-promotion that gave him the sobriquet of "Pathmarker of the West" and led him to the presidential nomination of the new Republican Party in 1856.

FactSnippet No. 749,866
6.

Old West led a series of expeditions in the 1840s which answered many of the outstanding geographic questions about the little-known region.

FactSnippet No. 749,867
7.

Old West crossed through the Rocky Mountains by five different routes and mapped parts of Oregon and California.

FactSnippet No. 749,868
8.

Old West identified these layers as multiple "frontiers" over three centuries: Native American frontier, French frontier, English frontier, fur-trade frontier, mining frontier, and the logging frontier.

FactSnippet No. 749,869
9.

Old West found that even landless young farmworkers were soon able to obtain their farms.

FactSnippet No. 749,870
10.

Texas in its Wild Old West days attracted men who could shoot straight and possessed the zest for adventure, "for masculine renown, patriotic service, martial glory, and meaningful deaths".

FactSnippet No. 749,871
11.

Old West concludes that senior officials quickly realized the high degree of cleanliness and reliability of the Chinese.

FactSnippet No. 749,872
12.

Old West finds the railroad set different wage rates for whites and Chinese and used the latter in the more menial and dangerous jobs, such as the handling and the pouring of nitroglycerin.

FactSnippet No. 749,873
13.

Old West was aided by other Native tribes with long-standing enmity toward the Navajos, chiefly the Utes.

FactSnippet No. 749,874
14.

Old West's nursed victims of an influenza epidemic; this gave her acceptance in the community and the support of the sheriff.

FactSnippet No. 749,875
15.

Old West distinguished two types of crimes: unprofessional and professional .

FactSnippet No. 749,876
16.

Old West states there is a "second Dodge City" that belongs to the popular imagination and thrives as a cultural metaphor for violence, chaos, and depravity.

FactSnippet No. 749,877
17.

Major type of banditry was conducted by the infamous outlaws of the Old West, including Jesse James, Billy the Kid, the Dalton Gang, Black Bart, Butch Cassidy, Sundance Kid and the Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch and hundreds of others who preyed on banks, trains, stagecoaches, and in some cases even armed government transports such as the Wham Paymaster Robbery and the Skeleton Canyon Robbery.

FactSnippet No. 749,878
18.

The single largest cattle ranch in the entire West was owned by American John W Iliff, "cattle king of the Plains", operating in Colorado and Wyoming.

FactSnippet No. 749,879
19.

Old West mobilized public opinion to support Roosevelt's program of setting aside national monuments, national forest reserves, and national parks.

FactSnippet No. 749,880
20.

Old West's real life was a hard one and revolved around two annual roundups, spring and fall, the subsequent drives to market, and the time off in the cattle towns spending his hard-earned money on food, clothing, firearms, gambling, and prostitution.

FactSnippet No. 749,881
21.

Old West sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark along with 45 other men to go explore the new territory.

FactSnippet No. 749,882
22.

The Lewis and Clark expedition did take place before the Wild Old West era, but it was a major event in United States history, and was one of the main reasons the Wild Old West era began.

FactSnippet No. 749,883
23.

The image of a Wild Old West filled with countless gunfights was a myth based on repeated exaggerations.

FactSnippet No. 749,884
24.

Actual gunfights in the Old West were more episodic rather than being a common thing, but when gunfights did occur, the cause for each varied.

FactSnippet No. 749,885
25.

Mythologizing of the Old West began with minstrel shows and popular music in the 1840s.

FactSnippet No. 749,886
26.

Old West presented the first "Wild West" show in 1883, featuring a recreation of famous battles, expert marksmanship, and dramatic demonstrations of horsemanship by cowboys and natives, as well as sure-shooting Annie Oakley.

FactSnippet No. 749,887
27.

Old West was followed by trick roper Will Rogers, the leading humorist of the 1920s.

FactSnippet No. 749,888
28.

Old West's writings are acclaimed and criticized for realistic fidelity to detail on the one hand and thin literary qualities on the other.

FactSnippet No. 749,889
29.

Old West'storians approached the environment for the frontier or regionalism.

FactSnippet No. 749,890
30.

Old West compared the effects of the railroad opening up Western lands to urban transportation systems and the automobile, and Western settlers' "land hunger" to poor city residents seeking social status.

FactSnippet No. 749,891