The historic and mythic elements of the American Old West have exerted a global fascination for more than 200 years and became the foundation for fan communities who have endured for generations. But the Old West (like all visions of the past) proved to be shifting cultural terrain. In both Germany and the U.S., Western narratives of white settlement were once seen as "apolitical" and were widely accepted by white people. But during the Nazi period in Germany and in East Germany after 1945, the American West was reevaluated and politically repurposed. Then, during the late twentieth century, understandings of the West changed in the U. S. as well, while the violence of white settler colonialism and the displacement of Indigenous peoples became a flashpoint in the culture wars between right and left. Reagin shows that the past that fans seek to recreate is shaped by the changing present, as each new generation adapts and relives their own West.