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Dead Eagle trailJane Hilton’s first visit to North America
was to Arizona in 1988. The enormous wide-open spaces, desert highways,
and vast skies were the biggest contrast she had ever experienced to
growing up in suburban England. This, combined with the warm memories of
spending Sunday afternoons watching westerns with her father has
contributed to Hilton’s affection for the wild west. There is definitely a romanticism that is associated
with the gunslinging cowboy, defending his land and his moral code.
These displays of heroism have been reinforced in novels such as Owen
Wister’s The Virginian (1902), and films such as John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939), with the iconic John Wayne. American culture has been defined
by the west, and the ‘American Dream’ evolved from it. The pioneering
days of the gold rush and the evolution of towns such as Las Vegas
illustrate the mantra of the people; anything is possible in America. |
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