Before superheroes dominated television, America’s greatest heroes wore cowboy hats, rode horses, and taught a generation of kids about courage, justice, and doing the right thing.
Part of The American Time Capsule — preserving the people, places, products, traditions, and everyday moments that shaped growing up in America before the digital age. This article explores the games, adventures, traditions, music, rites of passage, and neighborhood experiences that defined American childhood.
There was a time in America when television belonged to cowboys.
Not superheroes.
Not reality stars.
Not influencers.
Cowboys.
If you grew up during the 1950s and early 1960s, chances are you spent at least part of your childhood sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of a black-and-white television set wearing a cowboy hat, carrying a cap pistol, and imagining yourself somewhere between Dodge City and the Arizona Territory.
Saturday mornings had their own television ritual, of course, a childhood institution I remember in Saturday Morning Cartoons Were an Event.
After Saturday morning cartoons and Captain Midnight ended, the real heroes arrived.
The Lone Ranger.
Roy Rogers.
Wild Bill Hickok.
Wyatt Earp.
Matt Dillon.
Paladin.
Josh Randall.
And eventually, Rowdy Yates.
For one remarkable period in American television history, the Wild West wasn’t history at all.
It was prime time.
America’s Television Went West
By the late 1950s, the Western had become the dominant form of entertainment on American television.
Westerns became such a national phenomenon partly because millions of Americans were choosing from the same handful of networks, a shared viewing experience I remember in When TV Had Three Channels and Everybody Watched the Same Thing
In fact, by 1958, an astonishing seven of the ten highest-rated shows on television were Westerns.
America couldn’t get enough of Gunsmoke, Cheyenne, Maverick, Have Gun – Will Travel, Wagon Train, Zorro, Wanted: Dead or Alive, and eventually Rawhide.
Each offered a slightly different version of the frontier.
Some were heroic like The Lone Ranger.
Some were funny like Maverick.
Some were violent like Steve McQueen in Wanted Dead or Alive.
Some were surprisingly philosophical like Paladin.
But all of them fed the imagination of millions of American kids.
My favorite western hero was Cheyenne, a big man that used his size to do good.
Dads favorite was Matt Dillion on Gunsmoke.
By the late 1950s, Westerns occupied an extraordinary number of the highest-rated spots on American television.
Even the Horses Were Stars
The cowboys weren’t the only stars of those old Westerns.
Sometimes the horses were almost as famous as the men riding them.
Who could forget the Lone Ranger calling:
“Hi-Yo, Silver! Away!”
Silver was his magnificent white horse, instantly recognizable to just about every kid watching.
Roy Rogers had Trigger, the beautiful golden palomino billed as “The Smartest Horse in the Movies.”
Then there was Fury, the magnificent black stallion who was such a star that the television show was simply named after him.
And Flicka, the chestnut mare at the center of My Friend Flicka, had her own television series as well.
We knew their names.
We knew who rode them.
And when a cowboy galloped across the television screen, we didn’t just see transportation.
We saw a partner.
Silver.
Trigger.
Fury.
Flicka.
They rescued people.
They carried the hero into danger.
They seemed to understand everything their riders told them.
And somehow they always showed up when they were needed.
For kids watching those shows, owning a horse like that seemed every bit as important as having the six-shooter, the cowboy hat and the sheriff’s badge.
A cowboy without his horse was just a guy wearing funny clothes.
Fanner 50s, Cowboy Hats, and Black-and-White TVs
In our house, we’d sit on the floor in front of our black-and-white, 21 inch, Zenith television, me wearing my cowboy outfit and two-gun holster carrying my Fanner 50 cap pistols.
This was a TV in a wooden cabinet devoted to the upstairs kids rooms, not the smaller one on the rolling cart downstairs,
I didn’t just watch cowboys on television.
I dressed for the occasion.
I had a pair of chrome-plated Fanner 50 cap pistols and a two-gun holster strapped around my waist.
Those weren’t ordinary toys as far as I was concerned.
They were my six-shooters.
I practiced my quick draw until I got pretty good at it.
I even learned to twirl the pistols before dropping them back into their holsters, just like the cowboys did on television.
The Westerns weren’t the only things influencing what kids wanted. The commercials between them were selling us the toys, cereal and other things we suddenly couldn’t live without, something I remember in The Commercials We Never Forgot.
Of course, every respectable cowboy needed the rest of the uniform.
I had cowboy boots.
A sheriff’s badge.
And a white felt cowboy hat.
The color was important.
Good guys wore white hats.
Bad guys wore black.
Television had made that perfectly clear.
The Good Guys Had Rules
The good guys had rules. They never drew first, never shot an unarmed man, and certainly never shot anyone in the back. They protected women and children, stood up for the weak, kept their word, and only reached for their six-shooter when there was no other choice. Even when the bad guy deserved it, the hero was expected to give him a fair chance. To us kids, the lesson seemed simple: being the fastest gun didn’t make you the good guy. What mattered was knowing when not to use it.
I wore a white hat because only the bad guys wore black.
At that age, morality seemed about that simple.
You knew who the good guy was.
More importantly, you knew how the good guy was supposed to behave.
I was the only one of the Schaefer kids with the guns, which probably made sense to me at the time.
Apparently there was only room for one sheriff in the family.
The Fanner 50s used those little rolls of paper caps that you threaded through the gun.
Pull the trigger…
BANG!
Then came that distinctive smell from the fired cap.
I loved it.
Anyone who owned a cap gun back then probably remembers that smell. It’s one of those strange little childhood memories that can disappear for fifty years and then suddenly come rushing back.
And we discovered another use for caps.
Sometimes we’d unroll an entire strip on the sidewalk, find a rock, and start pounding them.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
It wasn’t particularly sophisticated entertainment.
But it was free.
And it was loud.
Two qualities we considered extremely important.
Then the television Western would end.
That didn’t mean the adventure was over.
It meant it was time to go outside.
After watching The Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers or whatever Western had captured my imagination that day, I’d strap on those Fanner 50s, put on my white cowboy hat and head outside.
The backyard became a ranch.
The alley became the trail into town.
The vacant lot became Indian Territory.
And somewhere nearby…
there were always bad guys who needed dealing with.
To us, these weren’t television shows.
They were training manuals.
Once the television went off, the adventure simply moved outdoors—part of the largely unsupervised childhood freedom I remember in How Did We Ever Make It to Adulthood?
We played Cowboys and Indians because that’s what television taught us to play. Looking back now, I realize those old Westerns rarely told the story from the Native American point of view. Like many kids growing up then, I accepted those portrayals without ever questioning them. Time—and a lot more reading—changed my perspective.
Nobody wanted to be the indians. The poor kids who lost a coin flip had to run around with the indian headress and moms lipstick warpaint and get “shot” after they were caught.
Everybody wanted to be the hero.
And somehow every backyard, alley, and vacant lot in America became part of the Old West.
As for those cherished toys, cap pistols, water guns, etc? Better take those off the toy shelves, we wouldn’t want to be seen as training our kids to shoot people!
My Marine Buddy Knew Tonto
One of the strangest stories I ever heard came years later from a fellow Marine.
Growing up in Southern California, he lived across the street from Jay Silverheels, the actor who played Tonto on The Lone Ranger.
Just a few doors away lived another legendary Western character actor, Gabby Hayes.
The neighborhood kids played together, and my friend carried fond memories of both men throughout his life.
After leaving the Marines, he eventually became a Deputy Sheriff for Los Angeles County.
Among his future assignments?
Serving as a jailer for O.J. Simpson and the Menendez brothers.
Talk about living through American history.
When Every Kid Could Ride West
Today, children grow up with hundreds of channels, streaming services, video games, YouTube and social media.
We had three channels.
But those three channels gave us characters almost every kid knew.
Heroes we admired.
Stories we repeated.
Games we carried outside after the television was turned off.
And cowboys.
Lots and lots of cowboys.
Looking back, I sometimes wonder if we weren’t the lucky ones.
Because for a brief period in American history…
every evening was another chance to ride west.
And every kid with a cowboy hat and a cap pistol believed that when the bad guys finally showed up…
he’d know which side he was on.
🤠 YOUR TURN
Who was your cowboy?
The Lone Ranger? Roy Rogers? Gene Autry? Hopalong Cassidy? Matt Dillon? Paladin? Josh Randall? Rowdy Yates—or somebody I’ve forgotten?
And did watching them end when the television was turned off?
I had two chrome-plated Fanner 50 cap pistols, a double holster, cowboy boots, a sheriff’s badge and a white felt cowboy hat—because everybody knew the good guys wore white hats.
I practiced my quick draw, learned to twirl those six-shooters and loved the smell of a freshly fired roll of caps. Sometimes we didn’t even bother putting the caps in the guns. We’d unroll them on the sidewalk and whack them with a rock just to hear them explode.
Did you have a cap pistol, cowboy hat, gun belt or sheriff’s badge?
Did you play Cowboys and Indians in the backyard? Were you ever stuck playing the bad guy because somebody else had already claimed the white hat?
And here’s the big one:
If you could sit down tonight and watch just ONE television Western from your childhood again, which one would you choose?
Tell us your cowboy, your favorite show, your favorite toy—or the Western memory that takes you right back to childhood.
The television show lasted thirty or sixty minutes.
In our backyards, the adventure could last all day.
📺 Continue Exploring Television, Advertising & Pop Culture
Cowboys were only part of the television world that shaped our childhood. The characters, theme songs, commercials and programs we watched together became memories an entire generation still shares.
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🎵 The TV Themes We Never Forgot
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🐉 The La Choy Dragon: The Most Dangerous Thing in the Kitchen
One wonderfully ridiculous advertising character proves why some commercials became every bit as memorable as the programs they interrupted. -
🚬 When America Smoked Everywhere
From the Marlboro Man to Fred and Barney selling Winstons, television helped make cigarettes look like an ordinary part of American life.
← Return to 🇺🇸 The American Time Capsule
🪖 BUNKER RULE
Wearing the white hat meant something.
The good guy didn’t draw first.
He didn’t shoot an unarmed man or put a bullet in somebody’s back.
He protected people who couldn’t protect themselves, kept his word, stood up to bullies and tried to do what was right—even when doing the right thing wasn’t easy.
We may have been kids running around with cap pistols and sheriff’s badges…
but in our imaginations, we weren’t practicing how to be outlaws.
We were practicing how to be the good guy.
📌 BUNKER NOTICE
This article remembers television Westerns as I experienced them growing up in America during the 1950s and early 1960s.
Those programs gave millions of children heroes, adventures and lessons about courage, loyalty and standing up for what was right. They also presented a simplified version of the American West that wasn’t always historically accurate or fair—particularly in the way Native Americans were often portrayed.
As kids, we didn’t think about any of that. We watched the cowboys, strapped on our cap pistols and carried the adventure outside.
Remembering that childhood honestly doesn’t require pretending everything television taught us was correct.
The American Time Capsule isn’t about rewriting the past.
It’s about remembering what it was really like to live through it.