Louis L'Amour was born in the right place, at the right time-the railroad/cattle town of Jamestown, North Dakota just past the turn of the 20th century. By the time of his birth in 1908, much of the surrounding area was well established as farmland. Even further out in Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and Utah, the "wild" West was disappearing rapidly, domesticated by barb-wire fencing, railroads, and federal land distribution.

Had he been born even a decade later, Louis would have resided in a very different place. In the 1920s, the cattle industry was decimated by the Midwest bank failures that would eventually lead to the Great Depression. It's not hard to imagine how few frontiersmen would have still been around had L'Amour come of age after the Depression instead of in the midst of it.