Tribute To A City

It was an end to the "Old American West " and the beginning of the modern era when a team of armed cowboys on horseback drove their mule and ox carts into an empty patch of land that would become Edinburg. A side note to history exemplifying the changing of an era is found in the little known tidbit that founders John Closner and William F. Sprague followed the wagon trail by automobile. Not the way you want a bold midnight historical event to be remembered.

I have always found a sadness in the passing of the old west. I'm not sure what it is. Perhaps it is the nostalgia for the loss of a romanticized way of life. That loss was never more clearly communicated than it was in the movie classic, "Once Upon A Time In The West ". Here is a haunting tribute to our little town, from that movie, as I would like to see it on October 14, 2008 (the 100 year anniversary of the day the wagon train arrived).

Italians, Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone capture that sense of loss of that era's passing in their movie and soundtrack. The video found here is that of Carla Maffioletti who sings Once Upon a Time in the West in the City of Cortona, Tuscany.

Before we turn the page on a new chapter for our town let us take a moment to pay tribute and reflect on our history and the great distance we have traveled.