Author Owen Wister argues, despite his critics’ assertion that The Virginian is mere fiction, that the book is as much a history as a story. The scenes and people are taken from the real life of Wyoming Territory between 1874 and 1890.

It’s a place and time already vanished in 1902, the year of the book’s publication, yet its memory is fresh. The mountains and skies still arc above, but the cowpuncher and horsemen are gone. Only their spirit lives on in a world no longer wild but not fully tamed—a “shapeless state.” 

As the steam train pulls into Medicine Bow, Wyoming, a scene near the station catches the narrator’s eye. In a corral, a young pony eludes all attempts to lasso him, “wise, and rapid of limb […] with a quiet, incessant eye” (1). Finally, one lone man drops off the gate and, holding his rope low, suddenly whips it out and snags the horse, which promptly and shyly follows the man away.

The narrator’s baggage is lost. He overhears a conversation between a tall, laconic, handsome young black-haired man and an older fellow, who’s about to board the train, The young one teases his elder about trying, yet again, to head off in search of a wife.