WILD WEST
WAGONS ROLL! It wasn’t just gold prospectors and gunslingers who headed out across the plains to settle in the Old West. Men and women of science made the journey too
GETTY X2, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS X1
The modern American West is one of the world’s great centres for scientific activity. Silicon Valley in California, for example, has long been home to the innovators of the information age. But when we think of the West of old, we tend to think of gunfights, cattle rustling, stagecoach robberies and all manner of other curiosities. However, alongside the outlaws, gunslingers, gold prospectors and saloon owners were pioneers of a different kind. As well as its legendary love a air with criminality and violence, the Wild West was a hotbed of scientific discovery, with characters every bit as adventurous as their gun-toting counterparts.