In the musical Brigadoon, a century-old town appears from the mists of the Scottish highlands. Here in South Dakota was an Old West Brigadoon, an entire town transported through time from the western frontier. But these were no false-front set pieces. Real buildings had been rescued from demolition, transported to the site, and painstaking arranged to recreate our entertainment-enhanced preconceptions of the American West. If the barn was the mind, the memories and the recollections, the town itself was the memoir—the perfected ejected fantasy.
Like a typical Western movie set, the town had been laid out with the buildings placed on either side of a Main Street several hundred feet long. Randolph Scott would have been much obliged to tread the wooden boardwalks that lined each side of the street. I would have too, but I lacked the boots and spurs to produce the proper clomp and jingle.
Excerpted from A Transcendental Journey
