The "Cowboyification" of Wyoming Agriculture

In the 1947 film, Angel and the Badman, Dr. Mangram (played by Tim Powers) says to a farmer's wife, Mrs. Russell (bit player), This isn't civilized Pennsylvania, this is the raw frontier?this is a place where mayhem, theft and murder are the commonplace instead of the usual. The portrayal of the range-cattle industry in nineteenth-century Wyoming reinforced this image. Cattlemen eliminated rustlers, even hired killers such as Tom Horn, and fought sheepmen for control of the range, then turned their aggression against farmer/settlers. In the classic western, Shane, for example, the setting is central Wyoming where Jack Schaefer's protagonist confronts the grasping rancher, Ryker, and his hired gunslinger, Wilson. It sharply draws the line between good and evil, the civilized farmer and the primitive rancher. The sod-busters are no match for Ryker's power and strong-arm tactics, as Wilson proves when he murders one of the farmers. Shane confronts Wilson and Ryker in the local saloon, and says to Ryker, Your kinda days are over. After Shane's revenge by gunning down Wilson and Ryker, Shane rides off into the mountains taking his aura of violence with him, and one assumes that the vindicated farmers will prosper unmolested by the cattlemen.1