Wild West Gunfight Stunt Show, American Theme Park, 1950s

Archive & AtlasEstablished · MMXXIII

Wild West Gunfight Stunt Show, American Theme Park, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Wild West Gunfight Stunt Show, American Theme Park, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-8CF4E5

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A crowd of 1950s families lines both sides of a theme park's fake frontier street to watch performers stage a gunfight, which is exactly what Americans in that decade needed to see on a Saturday afternoon to feel they had gotten value for the admission price. One actor stands over a downed outlaw with a rifle raised, while a second villain in a vest and holster stalks toward a third body already cooling on the dirt — the choreography of manifest destiny reduced to a ten-minute matinee. The Taffy Shop and a building advertising 1889 Jam Cellar anchor the backdrop, the kind of frontier-themed retail that let an amusement park sell candy and nostalgia simultaneously, the nostalgia being for a West that had been invented by dime novels roughly as recently as the taffy. Every parent in that crowd believed they were showing their children a piece of American history, and in a sense they were, just not the piece they thought.

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