While facing the challenge of each dawn, being tested a hundred times a day, his lifestyle brought out a chiseled, hardened man. The Gay Cowboy endured many hardships, living a life of great distances and dangers. While searching for a place where the grass was always green and the water sweet, he helped to civilize the Wild West. But these golden years lasted less than a generation, from 1858 to 1890, and then were gone. It was the time when Lincoln, Grant and Hayes were USA presidents, Victoria reigned as the Queen of the United Kingdom and the first football game was played. It was when Czar Alexander freed the Russian serfs too late, France took over Cambodia and Karl Marx founded the first Communist International. It was the time of the Franco Prussian War, Bismark preparing to become chancellor of the German Empire, the invention of the telephone, phonograph and the machine gun. While the trails were packed with steers, it was not the sound of hoofs but the thunder of Brahms, Liszt and Wagner that drew more attention. It was the time when Queen Victoria proclaimed herself the Empress of India, gold was found in Alaska, and electric light was invented. It was a time when the Gay Cowboy's days of roaming free ended with the invention of the barb wire fence. The open land had given the Cowboy kinship of sorts with the nomadic North American Indians. It was the fence that became a necessity for the small settler's survival. It became the final obstacle to the cowboy, either shutting one out or keeping one in.

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