An American tradition. Literature. Music and Art

The frontier is gone now. Most of its mining camps have become empty ghost towns. Other settlements of the wild West have grown into peaceful communities. Denver, Cheyenne, Boise, and Salt Lake City now stand where settlers once pitched their tents. But western frontier life left behind a great American tradition because of its dramatic appeal. Even before "Buffalo Bill" Cody organized his Wild West Show" in 1883, the western frontier had captured the interest of people in all parts of the world. Books, stories, paintings, songs, plays, and motion pictures about the Old West still pour forth in a seemingly endless stream.

Hundreds of works have appeared about Billy the Kid alone—including poems, novels, plays, ballets, and motion pictures. The West has also produced its own folklore heroes. Febold Feboldson performed amazing feats on the sod-house frontier of the Great Plains. Pecos Bill taught the cowboys all they knew, and even showed broncos how to buck.

Many works of poor quality have strayed far from the truth, presenting only the most sensational parts of frontier life. But other works have artistic merit, and give a true picture of those who settled the West.

Literature. Most of the early writing about the West came from writers who had taken part in its development. Mark Twain's Roughing It became a frontier classic. Bret Harte's short stories and Joaquin Miller's poems found admirers in Europe as well as the United States. Owen Wister's novel about the West, The Virginian, stimulated much interest in the subject. Andy Adams, a cowboy, gave a truer picture of range life in The Log of a Cowboy. One of Emerson Hough's many novels. The Covered Wagon, became a popular motion picture. Hamlin Garland, with A Son of the Middle Border, and O. E. Rolvaag, with Giants in the Earth, immortalized the sod-house frontier. Zane Grey wrote over 50 colorful Western novels. Later books include Walter Van Tilburg Clark's The Oxbow Incident, Conrad Richter's The Sea of Grass, and A. B. Guthrie's The Big Sky.

Music of the West, like literature, has been mainly popular, rather than serious. Famous songs include 'The Chisholm Trail," 'The Lone Prairie," and "Streets of Laredo." Many of these ballads grew out of English or Spanish folk songs that the cowboys sang to quiet the cattle, or to help fill the long, lonely, empty hours.

Serious music with Western themes includes Giacomo Puccini's opera The Girl of the Golden West Aaron Copland's ballets Billy the Kid and Rodeo, Ferde Grofe's Grand Canyon Suite, and Hershey Kay's ballet Western Symphony. One of the most popular of all American musical plays, Oklahoma!, by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, tells how the cowboys clashed with the "hoe hands," or farmers.

Art. The color of the western landscape and the vigor of running horses, stampeding cattle, and rugged men have appealed to many artists. Frederic Remington, probably the most famous, painted and drew over 2,700 pictures of the West. Remington learned life on the frontier at first hand and preserved it in realistic paintings, sketches, and statues. Others who have painted the West include Charles Marion Russell and N. C. Wyeth. Many artists, including Thomas Hart Benton and Georgia O'Keeffe, have used western backgrounds. Will James, Tom Lea, Ross Santee, and others have illustrated their own books on the West.

Entertainment. Motion pictures and television have made western frontier life familiar to people every-where. With cowboys and soldiers fighting outlaws and Indians, the "Western" offers endless opportunities for battles and thrilling chases through mountains and deserts. The Squaw Manoi 1914, one of the first full-length films made in Hollywood, began a trend that continues today. William S. Hart, a typical two-gun cowboy, became a national hero. Other motion-picture cowboy idols have included Buck Jones, Tom Mix, Roy Rogers, John Wayne, and William Boyd, who made the first "Hopalong Cassidy film in 1934.

Many "Westerns" provide poor entertainment, but some have been fine motion pictures. Among these, such films as Stagecoach and High Noon achieved a high level. On the stage. Will Rogers gained fame as "the cowboy philosopher." Radio and television present hundreds of Western dramas every year. Rodeos, especially in the Western States, feature daring cowboys who ride bucking broncos and wild cattle. Thousands of people spend vacations on dude ranches, dressing like cowboys in settings that try to recapture a bygone era.