Wild West Land Blog

It’s almost a year since I wrote about Annie Oakley, “the first American female superstar” and how she’s been portrayed in the media over the last 100 years.

The post remains the most popular on this blog with many people still interested in finding out just how one of the stars of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show looked all those years ago.

So with a bit of digging over at the Library of Congress archives, I’ve tracked down two new Annie Oakley pictures - the first was taken in 1899 by Richard K. Fox and is titled:

ANNIE OAKLEY - Famous Rifle Shot and Holder of the Police Gazette Championship Medal

The black and white photo does bear some resemblance to the Wild West Show promotional poster. The hat, dress, stockings and footwear certainly match, as does the chest full of medals.

But I can’t help but think the artist who drew the poster used a little ‘Photoshop magic’ - normally associated with modern magazine cover celebrities - long before the age of computer trickery.

The face is a little thinner and the nose a little more prominent, perhaps suggesting feminine beauty was a key ingredient of circus show marketing even back in the 1890s.

It’s circus acts that also form the centrepiece of the next picture, an illustration created by artist Peter Newell in 1894 to illustrate a story published in the March 31st issue of Harper’s Weekly:

The amateur circus at Nutley

Newell’s drawing illustrates an article reporting on an amateur circus performed by the residents of Nutley, New Jersey to raise funds for the establishment of a branch of the Red Cross Association. Their star performer was Nutley’s celebrated resident, Annie Oakley.

A gentleman wearing a hat and spectacles stands before a hoop held by two clowns. The scene depicted in the center of the hoop is of Annie Oakley, standing on horseback, giving a demonstration of her shooting ability. Outside the hoop are other scenes of circus acts such as acrobats, fencing, an animal on horseback, and a dancing bear.

Here’s a close-up view of the central part of the illustration showing Oakley shooting at an unseen target whilst standing on a moving horse.

It’s a truly impressive feat and one I can’t think would be allowed under modern entertainment laws given the potential risks to the audience and performer!

How about this for a novel way to get people into recycling?

The triplepundit blog is covering the Going Green Film Festival which takes place in Beverly Hills, California in April 2010 and a particularly quirky approach to increase eco awareness amongst US audiences:

David Dibble, an LA-based filmmaker and his crew are re-enacting the wild, wild west. With an eco-conscious marshal. “It’s a typical high-noon Clint Eastwood situation, where you’ve got a marshal and a bad guy’s coming into town,” Dibble said. But in this town, the outlaws recycle.

… watching iconic figures of the wild west recycling old guns, shells and cigars is sure to be memorable and puts the environment top of mind.

Wind power is causing a storm lately in many parts of the world, and not always for the right reasons. Whilst wildlife lovers ponder the perrilous nature of whirling blades for migrating birds, there are many greenies out there happy to put up with whomping turbines if it means less nuclear waste (that other clean energy).

Who would have thought then that 80 years after electricity reached rural America, the humble windmill would make a comeback, especially for farmers keen to power pumps in remote pastures.

The windmill after all won the West.

What’s that you say? The Windmil? Yes indeed, read Stuart Leuthner’s Fall 2003 piece on AmericanHeritage.com The Windmills That Won the West and you’ll discover that:

The windmill, even more than the railroad, was crucial to settling the West. Windmills permitted ranchers and farmers to live and work on land where there was no reliable natural water supply, which was most of the frontier. And when the tracks started to reach toward the Pacific, windmills supplied the water for the locomotives and those who served them.

Luethner goes on to describe how the infamous Sears, Roebuck catalogue “claimed to offer the most complete line of mills and showcased them in a 118-page supplement”. The company even offered instructions on choosing the best location for your mill.

It’s a great piece to educate yourself about an important part of western history and opened my eyes to a whole industry that sprang up in remote ranchlands - the cowboy engineer. I’m thinking of a whole army of gun toting Windy Millers who can build a fence, dig a well and fix a broken windmill:

Cowboys found they could increase their income by learning to dig wells and erect, maintain, and repair the windmills that pulled water out of them. They traveled across the Plains under the direction of “windmill bosses,” carrying their tools and food in covered wagons and sleeping under the stars. Owners of big ranches often employed crews of windmillers to make continuous rounds of their spreads.

In the 21st century, the best place to see these historic artifacts from the days of westward expansion is the American Wind Power Center, a dedicated windmill museum in Lubbock, Texas.

Texas is, of course, a state more often associated with drilling for oil but now has its own alternative energy training center in the shape of The WindSmith Academy which offers two day courses for people who want to learn the basic tenets of wind power generation.

If you can’t make it to Lubbock then how about picking up a copy of David Stoecklein’s new photography book, Windmills of the West: Rural America’s Most Important Invention. That should be a good taster of 19th century windpower engineering.

I came across some old holiday photos tonight of a trip to a real classic style theme park called Blackgang Chine on the Isle of Wight, a small island just off the south coast of England.

“Frontier land is a full sized cowboy town in wild west setting”

A wild west setting, if you can see past the British climate, flora and fauna and proximity to chalk cliffs that are occasionally sliding into the sea!

Here are a couple of photos of the cowboy town - first off a small scale western railroad engine with gunfighter mannequin in the background:

Next a shot of the ‘Last Chance Saloon’ painted in gaudy colours and complete with rooms available at an hourly rate.

It’s well worth a visit if you’re staying on the island, the chine itself may have been swallowed up by the encroaching sea but wild west fans can tour a tiny (and child friendly) frontier settlement without having to take a plane all the way to the US.

Yesterday I posted a link to data showing the rapid westward expansion of people settling the United States as demonstrated by the rise of farming. Pretty dull stuff if you’re not into statistics you might think!

Well 24 hours later and I stumble across the UNESCO World Digital Library which has a fantastic collection of documents and maps. Some very pretty ancient maps too:

I’ve loved looking at maps since childhood and would highly recommend Katherine Harmon’s book You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination if you share this interest.

So browsing this online treasure trove I come across some superb examples showing how long people have been fascinated with exploring and colonising the American continent way before the days of the Wild West.

I’ve listed just a few in chonological order below that are all connected by this spirit of adventure and probably also a fear of the unknown:

1. A Modern and Quite Precise Depiction of America (or the Fourth Part of the World) Dated 1562 and annotated in Latin it shows the first mention of California and also indicates just how much land there is to explore - anything above the southern seaboard states is marked “ulterivs hec terra incognita permansit” which according to an online translation site is ‘farther this earth unknown to stay to the end’. Very Lost!
2. Map of California Shown as an Island 100 years later and Spanish explorers have still not determined if California is connected to the North American mainland. Perhaps if the ever-expected superquake does occur the state may well end up disconnected from the rest of the west coast.
3. History of the expedition under the command of Captains Lewis and Clark, to the sources of the Missouri, thence across the Rocky Mountains and down the river Columbia to the Pacific Ocean An American classic - over 2 years of exploration to discover land and people previously unknown. Now you can read the original online.
4. Emigrant’s Map and Guide for Routes to North America 50 years later and it doesn’t take a Corps of Discovery to adventure across the US. All you need is a handy map showing how and where to start your journey. But 300 years on from the first map and the inner reaches of the American continent are now marked as ‘Indian Territorium’ - Indian Territory.

I look forward to future additions to the collection.

Thanks to Gapminder data you can now watch the real-time settlement of the US from the era of the founding fathers in Virginia through to the western states in the 18th century and beyond.

Visit the link for the data on ‘US farm land (acreage per person)’ and then hit the play button bottom left of the Flash style interface.

The chart will then whiz you from 1610 through to the present day with colourful dots appearing as and when records of farms began to be stored I’m guessing.

A great way to visualize the settlement of the US as westward expansion took hold: