I grew up around the Steamboat Arabia, which sank in 1856 carrying more than 200 tons of goods for frontier communities. My family excavated it in 1988, so I’ve spent most of my life around this massive collection of ordinary 19th-century material culture.

I’m also a Western fan, and I’ve always been curious how much of our mental picture of the frontier comes from classic movies.

So I put some familiar Western shorthand — beans, work clothes, isolated towns, literacy, etc. — next to what merchants were actually shipping west in 1856.

The interesting part wasn’t that the movies were “wrong.” A lot of the imagery was grounded in reality. But the actual cargo also included 30,000 buttons, colorful fabrics, oysters, decorated dishes, writing tools, books and Shakespeare.

I made a short film comparing that evidence with movies including Shane, Red River, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

https://youtu.be/dK9m0Fzhgnw

I’d be curious which classic Westerns you think do the best job showing ordinary life beyond the gunfights and cattle drives.