The Wild West isn’t just a region, it’s also a time period. Boundaries and dates are disputed, but generally speaking, anything west of the Mississippi river between the end of the Civil War and the start of World War I could be considered to count. For many of these regions, this was the time after the US Government had claimed these territories as its own and encouraged westward expansion and settlement, but had not yet made these areas into states.
The Wild West generally had a reputation as being a lawless place: a reputation that wasn’t completely accurate but did have some truth to it. This was the era of cowboys, gunfighters, and rail expansion.
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