In the 1880s, a weedy Easterner named Owen Wister had something like a nervous breakdown. Wyoming, with its wide-open spaces and healthy pursuits, was prescribed as a cure. Wister was immediately smitten by the taciturn cowboys and the rules imposed upon them by the cattle barons.
When I was growing up in north-west London, our milkman's cart was pulled by a horse, and cattle still grazed on the meadows near Church Farm.