Dan Flores

Why do Germans dress up and play act being residents of the West on their vacation weekends in European forests? How does Back at the Ranch Boot Store in Santa Fe sell $5,000 cowboy boots that will never see a stirrup? Why is there a Cowboy Poets Gathering in Nevada every winter? Why a Gene Autry Museum in LA? A Buffalo Bill Historical Museum in Cody?

A National Western Heritage Center in Oklahoma City? And why, maybe this is the most serious question here, does the phrase, just like the Wild West, cause all of us to imagine entire freedom of action, a whole lack of restraint, a free-for-all nobody is regulating? All that reverence and fascination for the West happens for good reason.

A National Western Heritage Center in Oklahoma City? And why, maybe this is the most serious question here, does the phrase, just like the Wild West, cause all of us to imagine entire freedom of action, a whole lack of restraint, a free-for-all nobody is regulating? All that reverence and fascination for the West happens for good reason.

A National Western Heritage Center in Oklahoma City? And why, maybe this is the most serious question here, does the phrase, just like the Wild West, cause all of us to imagine entire freedom of action, a whole lack of restraint, a free-for-all nobody is regulating? All that reverence and fascination for the West happens for good reason.

Because of its sunshine and the public lands that provide remarkable access to the surrounding landscape, the West is a great place to live in the present. But as we all know, it's the past of the West that's the key to its magic. Those of us who live in the West may love various aspects of the modern world out the door, but we all absolutely adore the Old West, the frontier.

Because of its sunshine and the public lands that provide remarkable access to the surrounding landscape, the West is a great place to live in the present. But as we all know, it's the past of the West that's the key to its magic. Those of us who live in the West may love various aspects of the modern world out the door, but we all absolutely adore the Old West, the frontier.

Because of its sunshine and the public lands that provide remarkable access to the surrounding landscape, the West is a great place to live in the present. But as we all know, it's the past of the West that's the key to its magic. Those of us who live in the West may love various aspects of the modern world out the door, but we all absolutely adore the Old West, the frontier.

We've absorbed it by watching films by John Ford and Quentin Tarantino, reading novels by Louis L'Amour and Cormac McCarthy, and histories by Stephen Ambrose and Hamptonsides. Of course, there are many versions of the West, and all of us have a personal preference for our favorite version. Clearly, for John Ford or Quentin Tarantino, it's the cowboy West of so many hundreds of Western movies.

We've absorbed it by watching films by John Ford and Quentin Tarantino, reading novels by Louis L'Amour and Cormac McCarthy, and histories by Stephen Ambrose and Hamptonsides. Of course, there are many versions of the West, and all of us have a personal preference for our favorite version. Clearly, for John Ford or Quentin Tarantino, it's the cowboy West of so many hundreds of Western movies.

We've absorbed it by watching films by John Ford and Quentin Tarantino, reading novels by Louis L'Amour and Cormac McCarthy, and histories by Stephen Ambrose and Hamptonsides. Of course, there are many versions of the West, and all of us have a personal preference for our favorite version. Clearly, for John Ford or Quentin Tarantino, it's the cowboy West of so many hundreds of Western movies.

For others, it's the West of town building and Wyatt Earp's or Marshall Dillon's imposition of law and order, or of settlers versus railroads or the gunfighter stories that Tarantino obviously also loves and loves to invert. And of course, there's the Indian Wars West of a few hundred movies and a few thousand paintings.

For others, it's the West of town building and Wyatt Earp's or Marshall Dillon's imposition of law and order, or of settlers versus railroads or the gunfighter stories that Tarantino obviously also loves and loves to invert. And of course, there's the Indian Wars West of a few hundred movies and a few thousand paintings.

For others, it's the West of town building and Wyatt Earp's or Marshall Dillon's imposition of law and order, or of settlers versus railroads or the gunfighter stories that Tarantino obviously also loves and loves to invert. And of course, there's the Indian Wars West of a few hundred movies and a few thousand paintings.

But as a modern Westerner, a writer and historian who is interested most in the West's remarkable landscapes and animals, the West that does it for me is one most people may not think of as iconic. I'm most drawn to what Western artist Charlie Russell in one of his magnificent paintings called When the Land Belonged to God.

But as a modern Westerner, a writer and historian who is interested most in the West's remarkable landscapes and animals, the West that does it for me is one most people may not think of as iconic. I'm most drawn to what Western artist Charlie Russell in one of his magnificent paintings called When the Land Belonged to God.

But as a modern Westerner, a writer and historian who is interested most in the West's remarkable landscapes and animals, the West that does it for me is one most people may not think of as iconic. I'm most drawn to what Western artist Charlie Russell in one of his magnificent paintings called When the Land Belonged to God.

For me, the West that speaks to my deepest soul is the West either side of Lewis and Clark. How the kind of natural West they saw came to be and lasted for so long, plus what has happened to that version of the West in the centuries since Lewis and Clark saw it. That's the West I try to understand. To me, that's the true West, a natural West, one that's West of everything else.

For me, the West that speaks to my deepest soul is the West either side of Lewis and Clark. How the kind of natural West they saw came to be and lasted for so long, plus what has happened to that version of the West in the centuries since Lewis and Clark saw it. That's the West I try to understand. To me, that's the true West, a natural West, one that's West of everything else.

For me, the West that speaks to my deepest soul is the West either side of Lewis and Clark. How the kind of natural West they saw came to be and lasted for so long, plus what has happened to that version of the West in the centuries since Lewis and Clark saw it. That's the West I try to understand. To me, that's the true West, a natural West, one that's West of everything else.

In part, my West is a kind of a first contact West, a theme of much science fiction and fascination with exploring places like Mars in the next few decades. It's about travel to strange places, new country and new animals, the meeting place of an exotic ancient world and modernity.