Westerns often stress the harshness of the wilderness and frequently set the action in an arid, desolate landscape of deserts and mountains. The ambience is usually punctuated with a Western music score, including American folk music and Spanish/ Mexican folk music such as country, Native American music, New Mexico music, and rancheras. Recurring characters include the aforementioned cowboys, Indians, Spaniards, Mexicans, bandits, lawmen, prostitutes, bounty hunters, outlaws, gamblers, soldiers (especially mounted cavalry), and settlers (farmers, ranchers, and townsfolk). Cowboys and gunslingers typically wear broad-brimmed and high-crowned Stetson hats, neckerchief bandannas, vests, spurs, cowboy boots, and buckskins (alternatively dusters).

Its stories commonly center on the life of a nomadic cowboy or gunfighter who rides a horse and is armed with a revolver and/or a rifle. Western is a genre of fiction set primarily in the latter half of the 19th and early 20th century in the Western United States, which is styled the 'Old West'. PLAY The Great Train Robbery (1903) runtime 00:11:51.