Eli5: I’ve noticed in several TV shows (Yellowstone for example) that people are always trying to take other people’s land. Is that really a common thing out west?

Question

I was watching Outer Range on Prime and same thing. I would assume it has to do with Bureau of Land Management leases? My brother in law has a large farm in the Midwest. Nobody’s is constantly threatening to take his land.

So are the constant attempts at land grabs an actual thing or is it just a plot device for tv? And aside from imminent domain how could a private individual force another to lose their land?

Economics flair for real estate question.

In: Economics

Answer 1

No, but it’s a mature motif of the western genre, and Yellowstone has a lot of the themes and tropes of a western.

*Once Upon a Time in the West* and *Open Range* for example are both western films where conflicts over land are central to the plot. They’re an ancillary theme in latter seasons of the TV series *Hell on Wheels* and while modern renditions skip over them events like the Lincon County War (Billy the Kid) and the gunfight at the OK Corral (Tombstone, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holiday) and the Indians Wars were very much about land rights, access, and use.

Historically, this was a thing. The Range Wars did happen as did numerous ‘county wars.’ But these conflicts were born from a lack of central authority in the western territories, or corruption in what authority was present. It’s not a coincidence that the western genre really took off in American pop culture in the age of the Dust Bowl when federal authority started reaching into the mid-west to deal with problems and in turn turned the conflicts of land in earlier decades into a cultural guidepost that remains with us today.

In modern America this isn’t a thing anymore though you’ll still see it as a cultural theme for die-hard rich types (like the main characters of Yellowstone) for whom any threat to their business interests is just a prelude to the big bad guvment coming for their property. There’s also the ongoing conflict in the state of Oklahoma between native tribes and the state government over land, so there are still some real conflicts over land rights but individual ranchers fighting to protect their land from predation by outside forces is mostly a fantasy for the modern imagination.

So even though it’s not really a thing anymore, it’s still an issue that sparks imaginations in a modern audience.