Читать книгу Gun Digest 2011 онлайн

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In 1890, the Director of the Census announced that an unbroken frontier line in the West no longer existed. Lawless territories were tamed and granted statehood. The times were changing. By 1900, the Indian had been overpowered and his threat eliminated. The days of the open range were a far-gone memory and distances were abridged by the railway and the trolley. All of this had happened during the short lifetime of many individuals, and these were sad times for older men. That the West and its times had finally faded was a crushing and unpleasant thought. Their West, a unique period of about 40 years, the likes of which men never saw before and will never see again, was vanishing into history and folklore just as the bison and plains grizzly had vanished.

Against this backdrop of vanishing frontier and fading memories, a fanciful image of the old West had arisen. The wild misconception was that every mining or cow town, every lumber or farming community west of Omaha was afoul with rustlers, cutthroats, assorted thieves and bunko artists, saturated with sixgun and sawed-off shotgun-toters, were enveloped in a perpetual smog of black powder smoke, and were thoroughly dangerous places to be. This appears, in the minds of many, to be the popular image of the West just before WWI. Hollywood capitalizes on this erroneous notion still. Even though old timers aplenty stepped forward and insisted on setting folks straight, for the most part they were not successful in dispelling the myths.