The Wild West: The Real Story

The history of the American West, from patriot emigration across the Appalachian Mountains, then Lewis and Clark's ambitious trip through the newly purchased lands of the Louisiana Purchase, is largely a story of the coming of nationhood of the United States of America. The Homestead Act spurred huge migrations of people looking for a new life of new opportunities traveling down the arduous trails to the unspoiled lands to the West. The discovery of gold and silver brought miners to the West to get rich quick. The affinity of easterners for western beef spawned the need for laborers to drive the longhorn cattle from the open plains to the rail head cow towns to be shipped to market. And an American icon – the Cowboy was born. The opening of the Trans-continental Railroad shortened the journey west from months to weeks, bringing thousands more to settle in this “promised land” which Americans believed was their “Manifest Destiny” to occupy from coast to coast. The emigrants who moved into and settled in the West did not find the land empty. It was already occupied and had been for thousands of years by the Native American tribes of North America, who now found themselves pushed out of the lands of their ancestors. Some would leave begrudgingly, but others would fight to keep their lands from being overrun by the intruders.

THE WILD WEST: The Real Story is an introduction to the people, the events, the adventure, and the drama of the irresistible surge of American and European emigration towards the setting sun. It is the epic story of those brave, foolish, noble and legendary souls who opened the frontier and created a nation.