The roller skating dance scenes

There are perhaps two wild wests - the version we see on screen and the one that happened in real life.

What's ironic about Heaven's Gate is that while the film takes many liberties with history, some of the things people criticize the film for were historically accurate. There was a roller skating rink in Johnson County, Wyoming around that time. The part where Nathan Champion writes a farewell note mentioning that he is trapped in a burning cabin, a scene which Roger Ebert called "ridiculous", actually happened. The residents of Johnson County did make movable breastworks out of logs and wagons to use in battle. Members of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association did offer to pay mercenaries $5 per day plus expenses and $50 for each person they killed. There's a photo of the real Frank Canton wearing a Cossack-style hat like Sam Waterston does in the movie. The wealthy cattlemen and their hired guns were rescued by the U.S. cavalry. The scene in the prologue set at Harvard where the graduates circle around a tree and rowdily compete to grab a wreath of flowers was based on a real Class Day tradition from the 19th century.

Heaven's Gate does contain historical inaccuracies. The movie exaggerates the number of people who were marked for death by the cattle barons and the number of people who were ultimately killed. In reality, only four people were killed during the invasion of Johnson County: Nathan Champion and Nick Ray, who were murdered by the invaders, and two of the gunmen hired by the cattlemen, who accidentally shot themselves with their own guns. While European immigrants did settle in the Great Plains, and there was nativist opposition to new immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe in late 19th century America, most of the residents of Johnson County, Wyoming at the time had been born in the United States. The music that plays during the roller skating scene is anachronistic, as it was first released in 1951. While Wyoming's Acting Governor and Senators might have had advanced knowledge of the cattlemen's plot to invade Johnson County, I know of no evidence that President Benjamin Harrison did. Many of the characters in the movie are named after historical figures, but bear little resemblance to their real-life counterparts. The real James Averill (sic) wasn't a wealthy Harvard graduate and U.S. Marshal. He was a small businessman who was born in Canada and lynched along with Ella Watson in 1889, a few years before the invasion of Johnson County. The real Nathan Champion never worked as a hired gun for the Wyoming Stock Growers Association. Instead he was one of the leaders of the independent ranchers opposed to the WSGA. The real Frank Canton wasn't from a wealthy, politically-connected family. He was a former outlaw born Josiah Horner who changed his name and became a stock detective for the WSGA and a Johnson County sheriff. The real William C. Irvine wasn't a reluctant participant in the invasion of Johnson County but an unrepentant defender of it.

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