The “Code of the West” was born with the silver screen cowboys. It was first chronicled by Zane Grey in his 1934 novel, The Code of the West. No written code ever existed but it was an unwritten, socially agreed set of informal laws that shaped the cowboy culture.
Ramon Adams explained in his 1969 book, The Cowboy and His Code of Ethics, “Back in the days when the cowman and his herds made a new frontier there was no law on the range. Lack of written law made it necessary to frame some
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