First Paragraph

We all know the standard images - the six-gun-toting sheriff, the gunfight at the corral or watering hole, telegraph relays and passengers arriving in town after a long train or stagecoach ride, fisticuffs in the saloon, and gold seekers trying to get the jump on the claims of others. In this whirl, as we see it in film or read it in popular accounts of the West's history, remarkably little attention is given to the pioneering work of the early settlers, who did so much to establish permanent communities in a wild, inhospitable land. If the settlers appear at all, it is as extras for an attack on a wagon train or a posse for a pursuit. Much of the confusion that has made it difficult to comprehend the achievements of the West's settlers would be dispelled if the history of that primal period were divided into two distinct epochs. The first would encompass the time through the founding of communities by wagon-train families. The second would begin when railroads brought elements of the industrial revolution into the West. 

- From  Rethinking the History of the Old West by Stewart L. Udall