Western Books

I have often read that Owen Wister's publishing of The Virginian, 115 years ago this week, on May 28, 1902, was the start of Westerns in America.  Nice that the setting was Wyoming, which was still pretty new and still a bit wild at that time. But that was not the first western, not even close. Long before the beginning of the 1900s were the Dime Novel Westerns, sometimes shortened to Dime Westerns.

Elk Mountain as seen from the town of Medicine Bow
the setting for the start of Wister's, The Virginian

The Dime Westerns became popular shortly after the Civil War spanning a time period of nearly 40 years before the publication of, The Virginian. The books were short, almost always less than 100 pages, and priced at a dime or 15 cents. These books centered on fictional escapades of real people, many of the settings were, Wyoming, Texas, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and Montana.  Mountain Men, Indians, Soldiers and Bad Guys of all kind made up the many characters of these books. Later, a smaller format, adopted for magazines became popular, these were all set to the standard length of 32 pages.

Today westerns make up less than one percent of the overall book market – so what happened? Maybe, not much. If a reader looks, it is easy to find westerns today, just not the old tired, fake Wild West type of story. 

This is my modern day, set in WyomingYoung Adult or Adult Western Mystery

Suspense-Thrillers and Mystery-Detective along with books classified as Young Adult dominate today's best seller lists. I write books I classify as western-mysteries, some set before 1900 and some in modern time. I still read westerns today, some are thrillers, some mysteries, and some suspense, but all are set in the west.

Guess the Western is not dead, it just lost its singular classification, maybe the old time shoot-um-ups died in the street with their boots on, but today great western stories can be found in just about any popular genre.

Here is a link to my books on Amazon – four of these books could fall into the western category. Click on any of the books and read a free sample.

The second of my Blade Holmes Westen Mysteries
Cover photo from Fort Laramie - each book has Fort Laramie settings.

Fort Fetterman

On July 31, 2016, Fort Fetterman turned 149 years old. Fetterman became an unnamed military fort on July 18, 1867. It was designated as a supply fort for the Indian wars. Two weeks after it opened it got its name, Fort Fetterman. The wooden fort was named after Captain William J. Fetterman who along with his entire company of 81 men was killed near Fort Phil Kearny seven months earlier.

Fort Fetterman today

photo -  www.conversecountytourism.com  

Within a few years, Fetterman reached the pinnacle of its success serving as the starting point for several Indian expeditions. After only 15 years, in 1882, the government gave up on the fort. The Indian wars were all but over, and the government no longer needed the fort. But it didn’t go away, not immediately.  It went on to enjoy a brief life as a woolly and wild frontier town, but by 1886 it was only a memory.

Fort Fetterman lives on, yet today in history, through the stories of famous people who passed through. Calamity Jane spent some time there; stories vary widely as to how much, and the writings of Owen Wister are only two areas that perpetuate the life of the fort. Wister, most famous for writing, The Virginian, describes Fort Fetterman City (after the closure of the fort) in his novel, Lin McLean, published in 1897. He changes the name calling the fictitious city, “Drybone,” but it is unmistakable that he wrote about Fetterman City.

Today Fort Fetterman, with some restored buildings, is open seasonally as part of the state of  Wyoming official historical sites. We visited two summers ago and were most impressed.  

A Stream a few miles west of the fort

Oldest House in Wyoming

Did you know the oldest house in the world is in Wyoming? This may not be a completely accurate statement but it is true if you look at this house the way I do. How do I look at it? I look at the building material not the structure itself.

How old is it? This is why it is the oldest, it is 150,000,000 years old, maybe more. The house was built of dinosaur bones from one of many digs at nearby Como Bluff. 

The Bluff is near the small Wyoming village of Medicine Bow, the town made famous in Owen Wister’s, “The Virginian.”

Como Bluff Area

Como Bluff digs have yielded bones of hundreds of dinosaurs, included two of the most complete skeletons ever found. One of many remains found here was the famous thunder lizard, Brontosaurus, the 75 foot long amphibious Sauropod.

Brontosaurus-Rex

I have always found the idea of dinosaurs roaming Wyoming and other parts of the earth fascinating, but I know very little about them. I am learning more from my grand-kids every time they visit and we watch, Walking With Dinosaurs.

Seems kids like to study the giant animals. I do not think we spent much time, maybe no time at all studying dinosaurs when I was in elementary school, maybe I was daydreaming of recess at the time. It was a long, long time ago when I was in elementary school, perhaps dinosaurs were still walking around at the time and not that interesting to study.

A New, The Virginian

 Noticed a new, “The Virginian,” is out, this one with country music star Trace Adkins playing the lead role. This follows the, made for TV, Bill Pullman version a few years ago. I know of four other versions of this classic western tail.

Dustin Furman in the first version in 1914

Kenneth Harlan – 1923

Garry Cooper – 1929

Joel McCrea – 1946

There were also two television series based on the Owen Wister novel of cowboying in early Wyoming. The first with James Drury ran for many episodes over eight years in the sixties. The second only made it for a year, 1970, with Stuart Granger as the lead.

 

Brands and the West

Since the beginning of the cattle industry in Wyoming a rancher needed two things, a rope and a brand. Wyoming has a huge book of thousands of brands registered in the state. One iron brands were easy and it did not take long to reach a point where most, or all of the one iron, brands were used up. Then the ranchers got creative.

Simple letters and numbers were replaced by symbols such as letters and numbers: walking, running, flying, tilted, rocking and lazy. In early Wyoming cattle day’s two young Harvard grads came west to seek their fortune in the new cattle industry. The two registered the Duck Bar as their brand, yep, a duck with a bar under it.

Many picture brands came into being around that time, other than the duck, things like, fish, pots and pans, the pitchfork, scissors, cow horns, and in modern day goal posts have all been used as brands.

One of the most well known of picture brands, made famous by Owen Wister’s, The Virginian, was the goose egg.

Today Wyoming is still a brand state, not many left anymore. With the advent of ear tags and now ear tags with computer chips or implanted computer chips the brand my someday die out. As for me I still like to see branded cattle, I try to figure out the brand every time. Once in a while I am right.