Goofy geography.


Bart Maverick travels by stage north from Santa Fe, New Mexico toward Laramie, Wyoming in the episode " The Jeweled Gun", 24 November 1957. He travels for several days and stays in hotels in several towns. At the end of the episode he gets on the stage at La Mesa to continue north to Laramie, Wyoming. Laramie, Wyoming, is almost due north of Santa Fe, New Mexico. So obviously La Mesa should be in New Mexico, Colorado, or Wyoming unless the stage route is very winding.

Maybe the stage route would have to have a big bend eastwards to take it into territory where Comanche Indians raid stagecoaches, especially since there shouldn't have been any hostile Comanche on the warpath in May, 1876.

Mr. Haskell is buried in La Mesa, New Mexico. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0644504/goofs/?tab=gf&ref_=tt_trv_gf

Santa Fe is only about 90 miles south of the border with Colorado, so one might think that there would be a good chance that after going by stage for a few days La Mesa might be over the border in Colorado.

There is a real La Mesa, New Mexico, and it is about 200 or 300 miles south, not north, of Santa Fe. So maybe the stage took the really winding and scenic route to Laramie, Wyoming, or else maybe La Mesa in the episode is a fictional town somewhere north of Santa Fe.

I imagine that a lot of Maverick episodes happen in areas that some viewers are familiar with. After all, since about 1950 or 1960 there were and are televisions in every city, town, village, and Indian Reservation in the real west.

So possibly other persons on this site may have comments about how goofy or accurate the geography in various Maverick episodes is.

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