Historic Replicas

Today I thought I’d talk about the American Old West, an historical era we all love but may not know that much about.  Everyone knows the basics:  Wyatt Earp and his Western guns.  Sitting Bull and General Custer. Cowboys, covered wagons, and cattle drives.  But how did the American West take shape, and become the cultural phenomenon that it is today? 

In the beginning, there were two things that gave the West its epic sense of scale.  The first was the Mississippi River, the great natural boundary between American and French territory.  The second was Thomas Jefferson’s historic Louisiana Purchase, which allowed Americans to finally cross that boundary.  In a single move, Jefferson added land from Louisiana to Montana, more than doubling the size of the new nation. The territory wasn’t entirely unknown; Spain had colonized California and the Southwest, and the French had towns and fur trading outposts within their great domain.  The British were settling Canada and the Pacific Northwest. Furthermore, Jefferson sent the famous Lewis and Clark expedition to see what exactly was out there.  For the most part, though, the land was unknown, untamed, and exceedingly dangerous.  All Americans saw when they looked across the river were either dense forests or desolate plains, a vast wilderness teeming with wild animals and potentially hostile natives with Indian tomahawks. 

From the beginning, the West was a land of unknowns, where death could come calling in a thousand different forms.  But it was also a land of unlimited opportunity, and as such it helped us create the American dream of self-reliance that is the foundation of our culture.