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Westerns are one of the most popular film genres.

From classics of the golden age of Hollywood such as Stagecoach (1939) to more modern westerns such as Killers Of The Flower Moon (2023), audiences have always loved stories featuring cowboys, cattle-rustling and shoot-outs.

Most westerns are set in the ‘Old West’ (or 'Wild West'), a surprisingly short period from about 1865 to the end of the 19th Century. But the realities of living in that period were often very different to those we see on the big screen. Here are six things Hollywood gets wrong about the Old West.

1. Tumbleweed didn't blow all over the place

Tumbleweed rolling through a deserted street is a common sight in classic Hollywood westerns, but in reality, seeing the wind-blown plants would have been a rare event for anyone living or working in the Old West - if they ever saw them at all.

Tumbleweed is actually Russian Thistle, which propagates by having the top half of the plant detach to disperse its seeds by being blown to a new area. It’s not native to the US; the first tumbleweed only arrived in South Dakota around 1873, most likely in a shipment of flaxseed from Russia, and reached the far west towards the end of the century. Given that the period referred to as the Old West was around 1865-1895, tumbleweed probably wouldn't have been as common a sight as the movies would have us believe.

2. Cowboys weren't often clean-shaven

Going by the classic Westerns, cowboys all seem to have treated themselves to a luxurious facial only a few hours before we see them on screen.

In fact, shaving - as with most matters of grooming - was a luxury for working cowboys. They spent most of their time on the range herding cattle, where there weren’t really the facilities for a shave or even a wash, so many cowboys would have been bearded.

That isn't to say cowboys didn't care about their appearance or hygiene. Facial hair styles, such as the handlebar moustache and the chin curtain (sported by US President Abraham Lincoln), were all the rage during the 19th Century. Full beards were considered unkempt until fashions changed in the 1890s, so cowboys would have groomed as soon as they had access to clean water. A cowboy's bag might contain lye soap, a comb and a knife or straight-razor, as looking less 'wild' when returning to town was important.

But movie-goers in the 1940s and 1950s preferred their stars to be clean-shaven with short hair, so cattle-driving characters sacrificed historical accuracy in favour of box office appeal.

3. Cowboys weren't all white

Watch almost any classic western, and you’ll come away with the idea that cowboys were all white men. It’s one of the biggest misconceptions that the movies have fostered over the years. In reality, up to a quarter of working cowboys were black and a fair number of them would have been enslaved people who were recently freed. Many others were Mexican or from South American countries.

Being a cowboy was a difficult, dangerous, and badly-paid job, one that men took because they had few other options. According to historian William Loren Katz, author of The Black West, being a cowboy was one of the few professions open to black men after the Civil War.

4. People didn't wear their guns around town

Contrary to the impression you might get from iconic western stand-offs, wandering around with a gun displayed on your belt was not only frowned upon, but was often against the law. Many towns had strictly-enforced rules about carrying firearms within city limits and visitors often had to check their guns into the local sheriff's office, or at their hotel, as soon as they arrived. So walking into a bar or saloon sporting a revolver was a strict no-no.

In fact, even the word ‘gunslinger’ is a Hollywood invention; it was first used in the 1920 western Drag Harlan.

5. The Old West wasn't as violent as we think (for some people)

Though the Old West was sometimes a violent place, things weren’t quite as bad as the movies would have you believe. Crime statistics for the period are hard to come by, but it's widely agreed that even towns like Dodge City and Tombstone - which Hollywood depicts as among the most violent places in the Old West - the homicide rate on average was less than 1% of the population per town per year (though this may have been higher in mining towns, which had less strict gun-control laws). While shoot-outs did happen, they would have been rare.

However, one group who really suffered from systemic violence on a massive scale during this period were the Native Americans of the Plains, on whom the US government waged war between the early 1850s and the late 1870s. Though confrontations between cowboys and Native Americans were rare, it's estimated that over 10,000 Native Americans died during the American Frontier Wars, which spanned from 1609 to 1924 and included the Plains Wars.

6. Cowboys didn't wear stereotypical 'cowboy hats'

Nothing says classic western like cowboys in huge 'ten-gallon' hats. In fact, in early westerns, the good guys traditionally wore white hats, and the bad guys black ones, just to make things simple.

But the hats movie-cowboys tend to wear are nothing like the ones people really sported in the Old West. The 'ten-gallon', with its wide curved brim and crease in the top (crown), is the Stetson. While it was eventually popular after it was first introduced in 1865, the early versions looked very different to the later Stetsons that we see in movies (they had flat brims and no crease in the crown).

It was also far from the most popular. People in the west wore an amazing array of different hats, including sombreros, flat caps, military caps, beaver pelt hats and even top hats. But the most popular and versatile hat was the bowler hat, or ‘derby’. It was so widely worn that one journalist writing in the 1950s famously called it 'the hat that won the west'.

This article was published in July 2024.