Miners, loggers, railroad men, and others flooded into the American West after the discovery of gold in 1848, and entertainers seeking to fill the demand for distraction from the workers' daily toil soon followed. Actors, actresses and traveling troupes crisscrossed the American frontier, performing in tents, saloons, fancy theaters, and the open air. This exploration of the heyday of popular theater in the Old West chronicles its emergence and growth from 1850 to the early twentieth century. Here is the story of the men and women who provided myriad types of entertainment in the Old West, and brought excitement, laughter and tears to generations of pioneers.

"During the 1800s, many settlers moved westward across North America to seek their fortunes as farmers, ranchers, and miners. In the Wild West, there were few towns and few people paid much attention to laws. Readers will take a trip through this thrilling period of American history as they join Louise and Nat for a tale of cowboys in a frontier town. They will find out how people lived, worked, and traveled in the Wild West, and much more."--Publisher's description.

For many years, movie audiences have carried on a love affair with the American West, believing Westerns are escapist entertainment of the best kind, harkening back to the days of the frontier. This work compares the reality of the Old West to its portrayal in movies, taking an historical approach to its consideration of the cowboys, Indians, gunmen, lawmen and others who populated the Old West in real life and on the silver screen. Starting with the Westerns of the early 1900s, it follows the evolution in look, style, and content as the films matured from short vignettes of good-versus-bad into modern plots.

A riveting history of the American West told for the first time through the pioneering women who used the challenges of migration and settlement as opportunities to advocate for their rights, and transformed the country in the process Between 1840 and 1910, hundreds of thousands of men and women traveled deep into the underdeveloped American West, lured by the prospect of adventure and opportunity, and galvanized by the spirit of Manifest Destiny. Alongside this rapid expansion of the United States, a second, overlapping social shift was taking place: survival in a settler society busy building itself from scratch required two equally hardworking partners, compelling women to compromise eastern sensibilities and take on some of the same responsibilities as their husbands. At a time when women had very few legal or economic--much less political--rights, these women soon proved they were just as essential as men to westward expansion. Their efforts to attain equality by acting as men's equals paid off, and well before the Nineteenth Amendment, they became the first American women to vote. During the mid-nineteenth century, the fight for women's suffrage was radical indeed. But as the traditional domestic model of womanhood shifted to one that included public service, the women of the West were becoming not only coproviders for their families but also town mothers who established schools, churches, and philanthropies. At a time of few economic opportunities elsewhere, they claimed their own homesteads and graduated from new, free coeducational colleges that provided career alternatives to marriage. In 1869, the men of the Wyoming Territory gave women the right to vote--partly to persuade more of them to move west--but with this victory in hand, western suffragists fought relentlessly until the rest of the region followed suit. By 1914 most western women could vote--a right still denied to women in every eastern state. In New Women in the Old West, Winifred Gallagher brings to life the riveting history of the little-known women--the White, Black, and Asian settlers, and the Native Americans and Hispanics they displaced--who played monumental roles in one of America's most transformative periods. Like western history in general, the record of women's crucial place at the intersection of settlement and suffrage has long been overlooked. Drawing on an extraordinary collection of research, Gallagher weaves together the striking legacy of the persistent individuals who not only created homes on weather-wracked prairies and built communities in muddy mining camps, but also played a vital, unrecognized role in the women's rights movement and forever redefined the "American woman."

Do Dandelion Wishes Actually Come True? Katherine Galloway knew this moment of calm wouldn’t last, blown away like the dandelion seeds she scattered as a girl. In 1880, three years after her husband’s death, she struggles to run an Oregon boardinghouse and raise two girls alone. Things don't get easier when her critical, domineering mother moves in. Katherine must make the situation work, but standing up for herself and her family while honoring her mother isn't easy. And with a daughter entering the teenage years, the pressure on Katherine becomes close to overwhelming. Then she crosses paths with Micah Jacobs, a widower who could reignite her heart, but she fears a relationship with him might send things over the edge. She must find the strength, wisdom, hope, and faith to remake her life, for everything is about to change.

Two subjects continue to fascinate people—the Old West and a good mystery. This book explores and examines twenty-one of the Old West's most baffling mysteries, which lure the curious and beg for investigation even though their solutions have eluded experts for decades. Many relate to the death or disappearance of some of the best-known lawmen and outlaws in history, such as Billy the Kid, Buckskin Frank Leslie, John Wilkes Booth, The Catalina Kid, and Butch Cassidy. Others involve mysterious tales and legends of lost mines and buried treasures that have not been recovered—yet.

A Photographic Look at the Old West That Is Alive and Well in California It was a thrilling time, when wagon trains and stagecoaches raced to the California goldfields – on the trail where the dust and campfire smoke met. In the shadow of the towering Sierra Nevada, the real Wild West was born. And it still lives today, in the extraordinary people who pack mule-strings into the mountains, race over mountain passes on horseback while recreating the Pony Express, and drive cattle out of the high country each fall. It lives on beneath the massive wheels of the twenty-mule-team wagons and teams of draft horses pulling historic wagons over a mountain pass. Sit back and enjoy this fascinating journey as the Old West comes alive in a book filled with unique western images, inspiring stories from the trail, memorable cowboy poetry, and some western history.

No one is better suited to convey the flavor of the Old West than this authentic American original. At age 13, in the 1930s, Hyde ran away from home in Michigan to his uncle's ranch in eastern Oregon. Yamsi was one of the last great cattle ranches of the West. Soon the boy won the cowboys' respect. A natural bronco buster, he eventually became a rodeo rider, bull fighter, clown, and photographer, working all over the West with the likes of Slim Pickens, Rex Allen, and Mel Lambert. After the war, he took Yamsi over, ensuring its survival in changing times. Now, half a century later, he gives us his valedictory to that last great period of the Old West. Full of humor, rollicking stories, and love of the land, he pays homage to the cowboys, Indians, and great horses who made the West the legend it is.--From publisher description.

Will Wright explores the continuing popularity of the myth of the Wild West, demonstrating how, as a cultural icon, it speaks deeply to a desire for individualism and liberty. The author discusses the myth through market and social theory.