You're all into a particular genre of Western film, but these horse operas aren't the extent of it.

This question gets rehashed regularly on a western literature academic discussion list I've belonged to for years.

You have to realize that you're overlooking the huge population centers of the urban west. San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix, Tucson, Portland, Seattle, and many other quite large cities are also Western. So their stories are Westerns. Just not the genre you've pigeon-holed in this thread.

Where does this West of yours begin and end? At political boundaries? The Sonoran Desert of Sonoyta, two miles south of the U.S./Mexico border, is identical to Lukeville, at the border in Arizona. And on and on. Is Bellingham, Washington, Western? It is much further west than Los Angeles and Phoenix. So does Vancouver, B.C., count then, since it is so close to Bellingham? And what about Alaska?

You're generally safer sticking to bioregions and spanning history than you are trying to pick a historic moment and layer it over the region.

SRS (my academic two cents worth)