https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_saloon#/media/File:Beatty_NV_Sourdough_Saloon.jpg
Unlike the eastern U.S., which is mostly well-watered and green, most of the west is dry. A major part of the early attraction of the west was that there was gold to be found there, in a series of "gold rushes". Unlike the petroleum that the west also had, gold on earth comes from meteors and so it's locations are unpredictable. The Spanish conquistador Francisco Coronado had explored the area three centuries before, looking for fables cities made of gold, but apparently never knew that there was indeed gold under the ground.
The American west is also known for it's spectacular natural scenery. All of these photos were taken from Interstate 70.
There are multiple scenes following. To see the scenes, after the first one, you must first click the up arrow, ^, before you can move on to the next scene by clicking the right or forward arrow, >. After clicking the up arrow, you can then hide the previews of successive scenes, if you wish.
https://www.google.com/maps/@36.9904733,-110.1045952,3a,75y,175h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1s-GdQue6Yi80w%2FVyv-OlURS8I%2FAAAAAAAAAZ4%2FPUYtTUlGNrAI6uOQGHLnJyQTi3pGpy-sQCJkC!2e4!3e11!6s%2F%2Flh6.googleusercontent.com%2F-GdQue6Yi80w%2FVyv-OlURS8I%2FAAAAAAAAAZ4%2FPUYtTUlGNrAI6uOQGHLnJyQTi3pGpy-sQCJkC%2Fw203-h100-k-no-pi0-ya32.500008-ro-0-fo100%2F!7i6144!8i3072
Another natural feature that the west is known for is the Grand Canyon.
https://www.google.com/maps/@36.0119473,-113.8111063,3a,75y,115.92h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1s-xay93hQ2PNQ%2FWWQvp_5qqFI%2FAAAAAAAADiQ%2FThZBeR2GXCckjLGuFfrEpGMfP0WngKD0gCLIBGAYYCw!2e4!3e11!6s%2F%2Flh3.googleusercontent.com%2F-xay93hQ2PNQ%2FWWQvp_5qqFI%2FAAAAAAAADiQ%2FThZBeR2GXCckjLGuFfrEpGMfP0WngKD0gCLIBGAYYCw%2Fw203-h100-k-no-pi0-ya9.000039-ro-0-fo100%2F!7i7168!8i3584
As significant numbers of settlers began to move westward, a settlement in what we could call the "Near West" emerged. This was Dodge City, in Kansas. The landscape does not begin to appear "western" until we enter Kansas.
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5492/3756/1600/dc_25099904.0.jpg
Dodge City was where the fabled Long Branch Saloon was located.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Branch_Saloon#/media/File:The_Long_Branch_Saloon_in_1874.jpg
Trade took place along what was known as the Santa Fe Trail, between Independence, Missouri and Santa Fe, in what is now New Mexico. Manufactured goods went westward, to Santa Fe, and valuables such as metals and furs went into the U.S. From Santa Fe, in what was at first Spanish and then Mexican territory, the Old Spanish Trail went to California, and another trail went southward to Mexico City. Dodge City was along the Santa Fe trail. The city of Independence, Missouri was also the gateway to the Oregon Trail, taking settlers to America's northwest.
The western United States, during this period of the "Wild West", was, in fact, a social order that was still in the process of sorting itself out. Across the west, we find "ghost towns" that emerged only to be abandoned when some economic promise, such as the discovery of gold or other wealth, never came to be. Much of what drew people to the west, particularly those who had gained military experience in the U.S. Civil War and were quick with a gun, was that they might attain a higher position in this emerging social order than they had in the old one, "back east".
Ghost towns tend to be made of wood, which usually lasts longer in the dry climate of the west than it would elsewhere. No one wanted to spend the money to build the buildings of a permanent town, such as a luxury hotel and paved roads, until they saw that the town was really going to last. Until then, there would be no more investment in the place than the hastily put up wooden structures.
This is the Goldfield Ghost Town, in Arizona, from the late Nineteenth Century.
https://www.google.com/maps/@33.457217,-111.49183,3a,75y,120.76h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1s-sMC-dtWlg4Y%2FU1q9oLezCRI%2FAAAAAAAAYY8%2Foj9U4KD3jzsR_THDRCMSq_gtD-1maM9KgCJkC!2e4!3e11!6s%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2F-sMC-dtWlg4Y%2FU1q9oLezCRI%2FAAAAAAAAYY8%2Foj9U4KD3jzsR_THDRCMSq_gtD-1maM9KgCJkC%2Fw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya80.40584-ro-0-fo100%2F!7i8192!8i4096
Would fans of the Buffalo Bills, the professional football team of Buffalo, NY, like to see what is known as "Old Trail Town", in Cody, Wyoming? This town was founded by "Buffalo Bill", William Cody, for whom the Buffalo Bills are named.
https://www.google.com/maps/@44.5154304,-109.1041704,3a,75y,98.04h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1s-8udAD-a-Gwc%2FV4k-7YKqy7I%2FAAAAAAAAGgQ%2F38zWZbdEIAIEW7u70ZUjffPvfI18ffkGACLIB!2e4!3e11!6s%2F%2Flh6.googleusercontent.com%2F-8udAD-a-Gwc%2FV4k-7YKqy7I%2FAAAAAAAAGgQ%2F38zWZbdEIAIEW7u70ZUjffPvfI18ffkGACLIB%2Fw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya241.20753-ro0-fo100%2F!7i10240!8i5120
Before it became the western part of the United States that it is today, the "west" hosted independent nations. The southwestern U.S. was part of Mexico. But there was not a lot of respect for Mexican law. The Mexican Government had almost continuous battles with warlike native Indian tribes, such as the Apache and the Comanche. American settlers were encouraged to move into Mexican territory, thinking that this would counter the strength of the Indians. Stephen Austin, for whom the state capital of Texas is now named, led American settlers into what was then Mexican territory.
But those American settlers eventually broke away from Mexican control, in northern California as the California Republic which gives California it's state flag of today and, more significantly, in Texas. As the Mexican Government tried to bring about stricter controls, Texas declared independence. The Mexican Army surrounded, and eventually captured the fortress of the Alamo, but was thereafter defeated at the Battle of San Jacinto. The president of Mexico himself, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, who had tried to bring the region under stricter control, was captured at San Jacinto, and Texas became an independent republic. Even though Texas was not yet part of America, the heroism of those who died at the Alamo would never be forgotten.
I had wanted to see the Alamo. But by the time I got there, it was closed. So, I took these photos at night.
The Mormons, a religious group founded by Joseph Smith but persecuted because they had their own holy book which they recognized along with the Bible, and practiced polygamy, as well as putting great effort into converting others, sought a land of their own by migrating westward. They settled first in Ohio, then in Missouri, then in Illinois where Smith and his brother Hyrum were killed by a mob, and finally in Utah.
Although the Mormons never founded an independent country, they founded a territory called Deseret which Brigham Young, who succeeded Joseph Smith as Mormon leader, ruled by their own religious principles rather than by U.S. law. Utah was eventually admitted to statehood, after the Mormons had agreed to give up polygamy.
The west was thus populated by people who had a very independent spirit, and who did not like to have the rules of other people imposed on them. The U.S. Civil War of 1961-65 had given many western settlers experience with guns. Westerners were likely to see "the law" as really the less-free ways of "back east" being imposed on them, although some western settlers were certainly fleeing justice from "back east". There might easily have been a movement for the independence of a new country, in the same was as the Confederacy, which I am naming "Westland" here, except that the west was too recently and sparsely settled, and it's nascent social order was still in the process of sorting itself out.
As the term implies, the "Wild West" was often a violent place. But yet the chaos had a distinct character to it. Crime is somehow perceived as more glamorous in the western U.S. than it would be in the east. The potential new nation had not coalesced enough to put up organized resistance to encroachments on it's sovereignty, so that resistance took the form of robbery.
Stealing from an illegitimate occupation force is not really a crime. When westerners "stole" horses and cattle, they were just liberating those animals which rightfully belonged to the land. No one had the right to come out here and fence off free land, and say what belonged to who. When westerners robbed banks and stagecoaches, they were just taking back for themselves the gold in their lands that the eastern establishment was trying to reach out here and claim.
A wave of bank robberies returned during the Depression, in the 1930s. The government had failed the people, allowing the Economic Crash of 1929 to be caused by the greed of robber barons, and so, in the ways of the old west, were just taking back what should belong to them. The names of John Dillinger, "Ma" Barker and her gang, "Machine Gun" Kelly and, Bonnie and Clyde, are like a throwback to their grandparents' generation back in the "wild west".
Dillinger even robbed police stations, showing how the law had lost it's legitimacy. When he was finally killed, people were reportedly dipping handkerchiefs in his blood to keep, as if he was some kind of messianic figure.
Why is it that the term "outlaw" is used so often with the American west? If someone breaks the law, why not refer to them simply as a criminal? It is because there is a subtle difference between an outlaw and a criminal. A criminal breaks the law. But an outlaw, in contrast, is someone who does not recognize the legitimacy of the law. Being an outlaw is not about crime, but about sovereignty, even though the ruling establishment will view their deeds as crime.
In the history of the United States, there has been hundreds upon endless hundreds of shootouts between police and criminals. But there is one such shootout that has been fabled and hollywoodized above all others. Just what was so special about the shootout at the OK Corral that took place in the appropriately named town of Tombstone, Arizona in 1881?
The Gunfight at the OK Corral involved ten people, five on each side, and lasted less than a minute. About thirty shots were fired. Yet it has surely become the most famous such battle of it's scale in the world. A Google search for "OK Corral" brings up over two million hits. How can this possibly be? It was not in the United States of the time, and the area would not become part of America for another thirty years. The names of the ten men would likely be unknown otherwise. Just why was it so important?
It is because the shootout at the OK Corral was actually not about crime. The Clanton and McLaury brothers were not being pursued by the law for robbery, or anything like that. What had happened is that a local ordnance had been enacted barring the carrying of guns in town. But the Clanton and McLaury brothers had refused to give up their weapons, claiming that no one had any right to impose such a rule.
This means that this brief shootout was not actually about crime, but about sovereignty. Did anyone have the right to impose such a rule, or not? The question came down to this shootout, when the side representing the law decided that they had to be disarmed.
There was never actually a nation called Westland. There was never a war of independence for a nation called Westland. Well, at least not officially. But I see this shootout at the OK Corral, as brief and limited as it was, as the nascent "war of independence" of what could have been Westland. When the side of the law won the shootout, none of the lawmen were killed while three of the other side were, it sealed the fate of Westland. It would never be an independent country, and would eventually become part of the United States.
The reason that this shootout at the OK Corral is so well-known, and so fascinating, is that we instinctively know that it was far more than one of countless gun battles between police and criminals. It was actually a brief war of independence of what might have been called the Nation of Westland.
This is true even though no one there mentioned anything about a new country. These were wealth-seekers who knew how to live off the land and how to use a gun, and didn't want the laws of any country imposed on them. The rule of Mexico had been removed, and they didn't want it replaced with the rule of the United States, or of any new country. But that is what it would likely have become, as I see it, if the shootout at the OK Corral had turned out differently.
The following scenes are of the area where the shootout at the OK Corral took place. It actually didn't take place in the corral, which was a short distance away. A corral, referred to in other places as a pen, is simply an enclosed area where livestock is kept.
https://www.google.com/maps/@31.7136523,-110.0673386,3a,75y,83.01h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1s-ix5tBL34VU8%2FV_WXt2CS8WI%2FAAAAAAADgNU%2FAGMFTaAnPcYSPBDA7B8kSrtfDMrH0FbzACLIB!2e4!3e11!6s%2F%2Flh6.googleusercontent.com%2F-ix5tBL34VU8%2FV_WXt2CS8WI%2FAAAAAAADgNU%2FAGMFTaAnPcYSPBDA7B8kSrtfDMrH0FbzACLIB%2Fw203-h100-k-no-pi5.241014-ya81.83158-ro7.8385487-fo100%2F!7i7776!8i3888
The only reason that the outlaws of the west went down in history as outlaws is because the nation that I am referring to as Westland never actually came to be. If it had, the "outlaws" would now be the heroes and the lawmen who tried to tame them would be the villains. That is the trouble with history. Human history is basically the history of conflict, and the rule is that the winners of that conflict get to write the history books, and they decide who are the heroes and who are the villains.
One such outlaw was Billy the Kid. How is it that someone can be convicted of murder in court and sentenced to hang, then escape from jail while killing two lawmen in the process, and then end up having the road through town where the jail and court are located named after him? You might be wondering what on earth would be going on in a place like that.
Here is the courthouse and jail that Billy the Kid escaped from, and the surrounding town. The road through town is now called "Billy the Kid Trail".
https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4937567,-105.390571,3a,75y,268.72h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sVLgECjf9R5KK2KeiuHZFeA!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo1.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DVLgECjf9R5KK2KeiuHZFeA%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D268.4657%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656
When Billy the Kid was killed a short time later, he quickly became a folk hero and the sheriff who shot him was portrayed as the villain. But did he really die? There is a persistent story that the sheriff had earlier been a friend of Billy the Kid, and use to drink with his gang at a saloon. The dead body belonged to another outlaw, and the sheriff allowed Billy to escape.
Decades later, a former outlaw who had known Billy said that he had long been living a quiet life in the town of Hico, Texas. There was a man there going by the name of "Brushy Bill" Roberts, who was supposedly Billy the Kid. He had all of the scars that Billy was supposed to have and, even as an elderly man, could quickly slip out of a pair of handcuffs as Billy had done while escaping from jail. There was a lot of doubters, although even president Harry Truman believed that this was really Billy the Kid.
But anyway, the town of Hico made the most out of it, marketing itself as an old western town where the surviving Billy the Kid had lived out his days.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hico,_Texas#/media/File:Hico29_(1_of_1).jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hico,_Texas#/media/File:Hico31_(1_of_1).jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hico,_Texas#/media/File:BillyTheKid_photo_mockup_20100401.jpg
I actually find the official story of Billy the Kid's death to be less-than-believable. He had escaped from prison by killing two lawmen. Everyone was looking for him. He was supposedly staying at the house of a friend, and the sheriff was able to find out where he was. The sheriff went to the house, alone, and talked to the friend while Billy was asleep in another part of the house. He awoke and approached, without a gun, which he should have had since he had taken the gun of the jail guard that he killed, asking "who is it" in Spanish, which he could speak fluently. The sheriff simply drew his gun and shot Billy dead.
But why would this outlaw, who had a supreme instinct for survival, be staying at a place where he could be so easily found? Why would he be speaking Spanish when everyone that he was dealing with there spoke English? Why would he approach and ask "who is it"?, without a weapon, instead of seeking to escape again? If the sheriff knew that he was there, or could be there, why would be go alone, enter the house, and talk to the friend, instead of surrounding the house with every available lawman?
It doesn't make sense. The official version of his death is less believable than the stories of his survival.
The two known photos of Billy the Kid are among the highest-priced photographs ever, both worth several million dollars. The more recently discovered one is of him with a group of people, outside a cabin, playing what appears to be croquet. The man who is pointing is believed to be Tom O'Folliard, who would be mistaken for Billy the Kid, and killed, by the same sheriff who supposedly would later supposedly kill Billy the Kid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Photo_of_Billy_the_Kid_(left).JPG
Why is there so much reverence for a murderer and cop-killer and prison guard-killer that there would not be anywhere else? We could not imagine that anyone like Billy the Kid would be honored and celebrated like this anywhere in the eastern United States, or anywhere else for that matter. Never mind looking for gold in the west, the rare photos of famous outlaws are worth far more.
The only possible answer is that this is not about crime, not at all, it is about sovereignty, the sovereignty of the west. Even though the west never became an independent country, and there was no official war of independence to make it a sovereign country, the spirit of that sovereignty is most definitely still there, and outlaws like Billy the Kid represent that spirit of western sovereignty.
In so many ways, the independent spirit of what could have been the nation of Westland shapes what America is today.
Las Vegas is founded on the spirit of the west. People went west searching for gold. While there is no more known gold that is worth prospecting for, one can still strike it rich by gambling at Las Vegas. During gold rushes, when there are people who have money but there is not much to do, gambling tends to emerge as a form of entertainment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_saloon#/media/File:%22Orient_Saloon_at_Bisbee,_Arizona..._Faro_game_in_full_blast._Recognized,_Left_to_right-Tony_Downs_(standing_with_derby)_-_NARA_-_530986.tif
The western aura of freedom is there. It has been explained that the reason that Silicon Valley is in California is that California law does not allow non-compete clauses in employment agreements, and does not recognize non-compete clauses from other states. Thus, anyone with a new idea in information technology, but whose employer does not want to pursue it, can simply quit their job and bring their idea to California. This is a reflection of the western settlers refusing to comply with laws imposed from 'back east".
In the 1960s, why was Haight-Ashbury also in San Francisco? Because the Hippies were questioning and rebelling against the authority of the establishment, and the part of the country with a special history of questioning the authority of the establishment was the west, and San Francisco is the urban area that is the furthest west in the continental United States.
Also during the 1960s, there were civil rights uprisings by black Americans. The first of the major uprisings was Watts, in 1965. The last, and best remembered today, is the Los Angeles Riots of 1992. But Los Angeles has nowhere near the greatest concentration of black people in the U.S. Why did all of this take place there?
It is because Los Angeles is in the far west of the U.S., and it is the west that has this history of questioning and challenging the authority of the establishment. The Los Angeles Police Department, the notorious LAPD, was supposedly the worst police department in the country. The 1992 riots began after police officers were acquitted of beating a black motorist, Rodney King, after it was caught on camera. But that goes back to the way of the old west, when the law was never quite completely legitimate and a posse of lawmen might include former bandits. Many of the legendary lawmen of the old west, such as Bat Masterson, actually regularly bounced from one side of the law to the other.
In 1969, at the height of the counter-culture movement and civil rights uprising that the heritage of the west was ideally suited for, an obscure musician in Los Angeles named Charles Manson assembled an assorted group of runaways and convinced them to follow him. Ironically he had been taught to play a guitar, while in prison, by a former member of "Ma" Barker's gang, who brought back the outlaw ways of the west during the Depression of the 1930s. Manson believed that the Beatles White Album was meant to communicate with him and that a central feature of Armageddon would be a racial war in the United States. He sent his followers to get that war started by murdering relatively wealthy white people, and making it look as if black people had done it.
In the first such operation, actress Sharon Tate was among the victims. The second operation killed a grocer and his wife. Manson hoped that, following the ensuing apocalypse, he and his followers would emerge as the only ones capable of leading the world. Manson claimed to be Jesus, who is sometimes referred to in the Gospels as the Son of Man. He changed his name to Charles Willis Manson, meaning "Charles' will is man's son", and making himself into Jesus. This is the anti-establishment of the west taken to extremes.
The Unabomber railed against modern technological society, and sent mail bombs to universities and airlines, which is where the "una" in Unabomber comes from. With a position of questioning the authority of the establishment like this, it should have been known that he was operating from somewhere in the remote west. The Unabomber was finally found in rural Montana.
Timothy McVeigh wasn't from the west, but was an anti-government extremist. But the west is the best place in the country for plotting against the authority of the government. McVeigh was drawn to the west, where he sought others who shared his views, and his strike against the supposedly illegitimate authority of the U.S. Government was directed against the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Just like a throwback to the old days of the west when there was so much resistance to the "back east" establishment imposing it's authority out here that people who would have been considered as murderous criminals anywhere else were taken as heroes.
The beginning of modern mass shootings in America, the use of guns to strike back against an overbearing establishment, would seem most likely to come from the west. Indeed it did, with the shooting from the tower at the University of Austin in 1966. Have you noticed the resemblance between this shooting and the defense of the Alamo, with the defenders taking down as many of the attackers as they could, while knowing that they were not going to get out alive?
A perfect reenactment of the Alamo was the Los Angeles police shootout with the Symbionese Liberation Army, in 1974. Except that the Alamo was made of stone and wouldn't burn. Maybe those inside the house knew of the impact that the sacrifice at the Alamo had on the country, and thought that they would go down in history as heroes who died battling an illegitimate establishment in the same way.
The assassination of John F. Kennedy, by sharpshooting that any old western gunman would be proud of, took place in the west, or at least the "near west" of Dallas. Not far away from the assassination site lived an eight year-old named John Hinckley, originally from Oklahoma who lived mostly in Texas, and who developed a fascination with guns and who would try to assassinate Ronald Reagan in a scene that could have been out of the old west. Reagan himself, formerly governor of California and star of many western movies, just had to be from the anti-establishment west as he went to Washington railing against over-encroaching "big government". Such talk might have come from any western saloon.
At the time of this writing, the most famous law enforcement official in the United States is Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County in Arizona. This is like something out of the wild west. Whoever heard of a police officer becoming famous for just doing their job, without any particularly high-visibility cases? This is certainly building on the nearby legacy of Wyatt Earp, one of the lawmen on the winning side at the OK Corral.
I had wondered about America's Apollo Space Program. The launch site is in Florida, at Cape Canaveral, but the control center is in Houston. Wouldn't it be better to have both in the same place? It makes sense that the launch center is in Florida, right on the east coast. This is because when a rocket takes off, it picks up the momentum of the eastward rotation of the earth, so that the spacecraft goes into orbit in an eastward direction. If anything should go wrong just after takeoff, as with the Challenger Space Shuttle in 1986, the spacecraft will crash into the ocean instead of a populated area. India's launch site is also on the country's east coast.
But space is also an entirely new frontier. America's original frontier, which made it into "The Land Of The Frontier", as we saw in the posting by that name on the world and economics blog, was the west. So, for that reason, the control center ended up being located in the west, at least the "near west" of Houston.
Hollywood, America's movie center, is also in the west. Could it be because so many of the earliest movies that were made were westerns?
The west certainly was not all about people of European ancestry. One of the most fascinating features of the native Indians are the pueblo communities of New Mexico. These dwelling places are many centuries old, from long before the times when New Mexico first belonged to Spain, then to an independent Mexico, then was a United States territory, and then was actually a part of the United States. The walls of the pueblo are thick and made of clay. This acts as a thermal mass by absorbing the heat of the sun by day, and then releasing it at night.
The following scenes are of the well-known pueblo houses in Taos, in northern New Mexico.
https://www.google.com/maps/@36.4385521,-105.5458806,3a,75y,351.56h,107.78t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipO6IfzsBK11pG9Sn4C-1M5dpsUs50UM2jW7zE6K!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipO6IfzsBK11pG9Sn4C-1M5dpsUs50UM2jW7zE6K%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-17.781351-ya107.63895-ro-0-fo100!7i6080!8i3040
These scenes are of the Acoma Pueblo. It is also known as the "City in the Sky", because it is built on a mesa, which makes it more easily defensible.
https://www.google.com/maps/@34.8979943,-107.5874095,3a,75y,130.6h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s-ypdBdjncr7IAIk3SUPsew!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo0.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3D-ypdBdjncr7IAIk3SUPsew%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D136.26566%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i3328!8i1664
As an illustration of how native Indian culture fits into the mix, in the west as in all of the western hemisphere, let's have a look at the New Mexico state capital of Santa Fe. Remember that this is where the Santa Fe Trail led to, from Independence, Missouri. The Old Spanish Trail led from here to California, and another trail led south to Mexico City.
The name of the Santa Fe trail lived on as a prominent American railroad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atchison,_Topeka_and_Santa_Fe_Railway#/media/File:Atchison,_Topeka_and_Santa_Fe_Railway_Herald.png
I believe that, had "Westland" become an independent nation, Santa Fe would have been a good choice for a capital. Most of the buildings and homes in the central area of Santa Fe emulate the building style of the pueblos in New Mexico.
https://www.google.com/maps/@35.6853563,-105.9405303,3a,75y,320h,100t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipP3L64O3Pl1ENg844u4WUQjUld8hhu4QWNuHlDy!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipP3L64O3Pl1ENg844u4WUQjUld8hhu4QWNuHlDy%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-10-ya40.717983-ro-0-fo100!7i13312!8i6656
The border between the U.S. and Mexico is one of the most troublesome borders in the world.
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5492/3756/1600/dc_250994.jpg
The issue with this border is that it goes against ten thousand years of history. Many of the Indians of the southwest are at least semi-nomadic. That means that they regularly moved around. But then, white people of European background come along. Some of the white people speak English, and some speak Spanish. The two groups draw a border between them, and expect the Indians to comply with the border also.
America had always been about settling the west. I believe that what really brought about the Revolutionary War was not "taxation without representation", or anything like that. It was American colonists serving with Britain in the French and Indian War. The Appalachians had been a major barrier, few American colonists along the eastern seaboard had ever seen on the other side of the mountains. But the French and Indian War allowed many to see, for the first time, the vast and rich lands to the west of the Appalachians. With Britain forbidding further westward expansion, it was only a matter of time before Americans decided to break free and get those lands for themselves.
Extensive westward settlement began as soon as the war ended. Kentucky was the land adjacent to Virginia, on the other side of the Appalachians. Daniel Boone became an early pioneer legend by leading settlers through the Cumberland Gap to Kentucky. The move west continued from there, and the settlers didn't want to get told what to do by the "eastern establishment" any more than the first Americans wanted to get told what to do by Britain. The outlaws of the "wild west" were just reenacting earlier American history, they went down in history as outlaws, rather than as heroes, only because of how that history turned out.
America had to make the west seem so all-American in order to absorb it's independent spirit. The eastern U.S. effectively joined the west to preclude it from becoming a separate country. This is why American politics is so polarized between Democrats and Republicans, representing the independent spirit and contempt for government of the west, it had to literally absorb what could have been a different country. It is still easy to imagine a separate country in what is now the American west, perhaps called "Westland" and with "Home on the Range" as it's national anthem.
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