Life in the American West

Life in the American west is juxtaposition between the old and the new. You can still find people living the working cowboy life in the twenty-first century. There are still cattle ranches, sheep ranches, and dairy farms. There are square dances in town halls and county fairs. There are Native Americans living in their traditional ways and museums devoted to the anthropology of indigenous peoples.

There is western art in the form of sterling silver and turquoise jewelry, as well as coral, onyx, and other stones. There is a culture of western painting; for example, the art of Georgia O'Keefe. There is the photography of Ansel Adams, who captured the great western landscapes on film. Natural monuments abound, whether as large as the Grand Canyon, in Arizona, or as small as the Petrified Forest, near Calistoga, in Northern California.

Amidst all this splendor and cowboy lifestyle there are booming cities, big business and suburban sprawl. People may go to work wearing jeans but they are still working for big corporations. The computer industry is huge in the west, especially in California's Silicon Valley and in Texas, where Compaq computers has its headquarters. Orchards and farms have disappeared from suburban neighborhoods, to be replaced by multiplex movie theaters and giant shopping malls or outlet centers. Dancing is done in nightclubs where live music, karaoke and radio favorites blare.

Gambling is a big source of entertainment in states where it is legal, such as Nevada and increasingly in California. There are museums, parks, libraries, monuments and every other kind of entertainment imaginable. There are quickie marriages and quickie divorces. There is the corporate lifestyle and there are people who wish to escape from the corporate lifestyle. The American West has it all.