Life in the Old West

If you’ve read all the tales of gold rushes, prospectors, and gold panning along rugged mountain streams, maybe you’ve thought about trying your luck at finding some of the gold “in them thar hills”?

I just added a new, rather long page to the site with the complete line of gold prospecting supplies sold by one of our merchant partners, Black Cat Mining.

Check out the great selection of gold panning kits, maps, how-to prospecting and mining books, and even a couple of good deals on metal detectors. One word of explanation: The page is pretty long so you can see all the gold mining supplies available from Black Cat Mining, so it’ll take a minute or two to load completely in your browser.

Read more on Care to try your hand at panning or prospecting for gold?…

If and when the average reader thinks of “Westerns” he probably things of a small hand full of writers. Somewhere near the most-recalled names of Western writers would be Louis L’Amour.

I know first-hand that many fine Western writers who have done and continue to do better work than L’Amour do NOT think of him as a particularly good writer. But all would respect the impact he has had on modern Western novels. He was indeed a force to be reckoned with. And with all his failings as a writer, L’Amour indeed knew how to tell a story. If you haven’t read his stuff, look around this site, “The Louis L’Amour Trading Post,” and you’ll find some good books and some fascinating information by L’Amour’s son about the writer’s career. (If you’ve read my “About” page regarding the “Old Hoppy” nickname, there’s an especially interesting discussion of the Hopalong Cassidy books L’Amour refused to claim authorship of.)

Read more on Western writers of note: Love him or not, Louis L’Amour was a force of nature…

Maybe you’ve never thought about this question before, but in terms of life in the “Old West,” we need to ask the question I’m asking in the title of this post: Where and when did “the West” begin?

You could say, along with many reputable historians, that “the West” was a concept in the minds of most European Americans from the time they found themselves on this continent and looked toward the setting sun. Indeed, American history has always spoken of “the West” or “Western regions,” even when that meant the Appalachian Mountains, the Great Smokies, etc., “Western” positions on the continent far east of what we think of in popular culture as “the Old West.”

Read more on Where and when did ‘the West’ really begin in America?…

One of the most famous TV Westerns of all time was “Bonanza.” The series ran for 14 seasons, from 1959-73, and ran the gamut from TV “horse opera” through serious drama. Who can forget Ben Cartwright (Lorne Green) and his sons (“Hoss” played by Dan Blocker, “Adam,” played by Pernell Roberts, and “Little Joe,” played by Michael Landon) and their life and adventures on the Ponderosa ranch, located in Nevada? Just for fun, here’s a video I found of their rousing opening theme. Enjoy!

Read more on Have fun with famous TV Western and Western DVD collectibles…

The more naive view of westward expansion in the U.S. views it from the standpoint of hearty pioneers risking their lives journeying into unknown wilderness to make a new, better life for themselves and their families.

Cynics point out that many “indigenous” people already lived in these lands and weren’t happy to have those lands dominated by newcomers who felt they could make land their personal property, instead of treating the land as freely belonging to everyone — in other words, the cynic would say, the pioneers weren’t expanding into new land, they were conquering and then displacing or killing the original “owners” of the western lands.

Read more on Westward Ho! Would that be expansion or conquest?…

Real life in that time and those places we know as the American West was mostly not like the movie and television fiction we learn about the Old West. Real life was generally much harder, much duller, hotter, dustier, and had little of the glamor we learn from the movies.

In the real Old West, gunfighters were few and far between. Bank robbers and stagecoach holdup artists really were a problem, just as they are in modern times. Well, more accurately, we still have the bank robbers, but not many stagecoaches have been held up since the days of Black Bart. There certainly were cowboys, though very unglamorous cowboys. There were definitely Indians, and, yes, they were called “Indians,” never by the modern “politically correct” term “Native Americans.”

Read more on Real life in the American Old West — join me on the journey…