Wild West

The American Old West or Wild West comprises the history, geography, peoples, lore, and cultural expression of life in the Western United States (i.e., anywhere west of the Mississippi River), most often referring to the period of the latter half of the 19th century, between the American Civil War and the end of the century. More encompassing and more accurate, however, is the inclusion of the entire 19th century and to the end of the Mexican Revolution in 1920.

The Western is a fiction genre seen in film, television, radio, literature, painting and other visual arts. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the later half of the 19th century in what became the Western United States (known as the American Old West or Wild West), but also in Western Canada, Mexico (The Wild Bunch, Vera Cruz), Alaska (The Far Country, North Alaska) and even Australia (Quigley Down Under, The Proposition). Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of the Alamo in 1836 but most are set between the end of the American Civil War and the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890, though there are several "late Westerns" (e.g., The Wild Bunch and 100 Rifles) set as late as the Mexican Revolution in 1913. There are also a number of films about Western-type characters in contemporary settings where they don't fit in, such as Junior Bonner set in the 1970s, and Down in the Valley and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada in the 21st Century.

Westerns often portray how primitive and obsolete ways of life confronted modern technological or social changes. This may be depicted by showing conflict between natives and settlers or U.S. Cavalry or between sheep and cattle farmers, or by showing ranchers being threatened by the onset of the Industrial Revolution. American Westerns of the 1940s and 1950s emphasize the values of honor and sacrifice. Westerns from the 1960s and 1970s often have more pessimistic view, glorifying a rebellious anti-hero and highlighting the cynicism, brutality and inequality of the American West. Despite being tightly associated with a specific time and place in American history, these themes have allowed Westerns to be produced and enjoyed across the world.

Through treaties with foreign nations and native peoples, political compromise, technological innovation, military conquest, establishment of law and order, and the great migrations of foreigners, the United States expanded from the coast to the coast (Atlantic Ocean-to-Pacific Ocean), fulfilling its belief in Manifest Destiny. In securing and managing the West, the U.S. federal government greatly expanded its powers, as the nation grew from an agrarian society to an industrialized nation. First promoting settlement and exploitation of the land, by the end of the 19th century the federal government became a steward of the remaining open spaces. As the American Old West passed into history, the myths of the West took firm hold in the imagination of Americans and foreigners alike.

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