American frontier
The Western United States has played a significant role in history and fiction. The terms Old West and Wild West refer to life in western North America, beyond the settled frontier, during the 19th century, especially between 1860 and 1900.
Many accounts of Old West life have been highly romanticized. In typical Western fiction, the Old West is a dry landscape populated by cowboys, Indians, outlaws, gold miners, trappers and explorers. Thus conflicts generally occurred, and still occur, over water, since land without water is of little value.
Old West fiction has been a popular genre, featuring authors such as Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour. Movies such as those featuring John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, radio dramas, television, pulp novels and comic books all had popular Old West themes. In fact, the genre was so popular that it spawned another, the Kraut-Western, which is alive and well even one century after its debut. Karl May, the best-selling German writer of all time, due to his classic Wild West adventure novels featuring the unforgettable protagonists Old Shatterhand and Winnetou, was imitated by many, but has never been surpassed.
There is a non-fiction side of the American West, as in, for example, Robert Laxalt's memoir Sweet Promised Land, in which Dominique Laxalt, his father, a Basque sheepherder, re-visits the old country. The book ends with Laxalt's desire to return to his home in Nevada: "... and he saw the mountains of the West rise up ..."
See also: The West (U.S.), U.S. Western states; Historical reenactment