The American Old West was the land west of the Mississippi River roughly in or around the latter half of the nineteenth century; specifically we might start what we now think of as the "Wild West" era with the California Gold Rush of 1848 and end it with the U.S. Census Bureau's official recognition in 1890 of the end of the frontier. This setting is home to The Western, a definitively American genre almost as stylized and standardized as Commedia dell'Arte. The Wild West is basically the Theme Park Version or fictionalization of this setting. It has its own set of specialized subtropes, including a wide assortment of stock character types and its own specialized locations.

The Theme Park Version of the Old West is a land of Indians, grizzled prospectors, scenic bluffs, Conestoga wagons, tough, shotgun-toting pioneers and buxom, be-feathered dance-hall girls. Also home to very lucrative sugar glass and balsa-wood chair industries, judging by the number of bar brawls which occur during a single episode of a typical western series. Bad guys and anti-heroes wear black hats, good guys and sheriffs wear white hats, shootouts on Main Street occur with the frequency of at least one an hour—with the sun at high noon each time—and everyone drinks sarsaparilla or whiskey.

The real Old West was nothing like The Theme Park Version (which was originally the creation of 19th-century "dime novels"). There weren't many huge shootouts^note Part of the reason the Gunfight at the OK Corral is so well-remembered, or at least fictionalized, is because its 4-on-5 lineup was so exceptional, quickdraw duels were rare^note Again, part of the reason Wild Bill Hickock is so well-remembered, or at least fictionalized, is because he won what was almost certainly the first and may have been the only one of these, and gun duels and violent gun-wielding criminals weren't exclusive to desert-like "western" areas. Plus, since many guns were very inaccurate in those days, they sometimes tended to happen in significantly closer quarters than they do in fiction. The average Western town had 1.5 murders per year, and most of those weren't done with guns (due to the West having a relatively small population compared to the East). Carrying guns in these towns was more likely to get you arrested than shot, and you were much more likely to die from diseases like cholera, dysentery, and tuberculosis, or in an accident like being dragged by your own horse, than to be killed in a raging gunfight or get scalped by Indians. Although, by all means, it was still a lawless and violent era, with three major 19th-century American wars taking place in the frontier (the Mexican-American War, the American Civil War and the American Indian Wars) and also other range wars, bandit attacks and feuds. Not to mention that courts were almost non-existent, so settlers substituted with vigilance committees, which were more focused on lynching people than doing any law practices. And while the absolute number of murders-per-year was low, the per-capita murder rate, adjusted for the low population densities, was indeed very high by modern standards, for example around 165 per 100,000 adults per year in Dodge City in the 1880s — but again, most of those murders weren't done with guns. But overall, the Wild West was not so wild — it was actually more simple and boring, in fact. Even at the time, the Wild West was a media creation. People in the Tame East went to Wild West shows and read dime novels about gunslingers, while the real people out west got on with their farming and ranching and mining.

Another deviation from The Theme Park Version common in media is the lack of racial diversity. Most depictions of classic cowboys in media show them as disproportionately white. While there obviously were white cowboys, there was also a much higher percentage (with some estimates as high as 50%) of black^note going west was common for escaped/freed slaves, East Asian^note many, particularly Chinese, immigrated to work on the railroads and some naturally moved into other job opportunities, Latin^note much of what we associate with classic western cowboys was brought north from Mexico, where "vaqueros" had been active for centuries owing to Spain's earlier colonization of the region, and Native American cowboys than is typically portrayed in the media.

See also The Western (the genre of works which largely take place in this setting). For tropes associated with this setting, see Wild West Tropes. A popular subject of The Parody, and surprisingly popular outside America. Frequently overlaps with The Savage South. Dawn of the Wild West is a sub-trope set during the time period just before the Wild West. Twilight of the Old West is about the dying embers of the Wild West flickering out during the early years of the New Old West. May overlap with Settling the Frontier. Largely occurs contemporaneously with The Gilded Age. Compare The Golden Age of Piracy, another historical period that has its own famous outlaws which has since become the subject of romanticization in modern pop culture.

It's become a Cyclic National Fascination since even before the States became a cultural magnet.

Works that are set in this time period include: