Where Myth and Reality Merge

As children, we are brought up on a steady diet of western folklore. Cowboys and Indians, soldiers, fur trappers and emigrants are all familiar characters to us. For the most part, they are nothing more than myth - fleeting characters on the big screen or the family television set. There was a place, however, where myth and reality merged; a place where the great events of the opening of the frontier were played out on a grand scale; a place where the list of characters who passed through read like a Who's Who of western history. This place was Fort Laramie, truly the crossroads of the American West.