Connors, not sure if you read this on the RPT website, but just in case, I thought I'd put it here for you. In particular, I thought the links might prove interesting.
One More Tip: GMing A Western RPG
From Jeremy
Avoid setting the game too late. The urge is to make sure your heroes have repeating rifles and good revolvers, but a lot of the "real" wild west happens between 1850 and 1880.
Too early and there's no one much to interact with, too late, and the place is too civilized.
I think roleplaying how the hero gets into the west is important too. Most people started out as tenderfoots of one sort or another.
For the first few adventures, having a home base - a fort, town or trading post - is important as a point for generating adventures and ideas and interactions.
There's a lot of good resources online. The PBS series The West generated a Wild West timeline that is exceptionally good.
http://www.roleplayingtips.com/url/thewest
There's also a site Legends of the Old West with a lot of good information.
http://www.roleplayingtips.com/url/oldwest
One idea I had for a western campaign, and one I still think would be a good one, would be to begin the campaign during the Jayhawk War in 1858-1859 along the Missouri Kansas border.
Have the characters take sides, then go through the civil war (more of it was fought in the west than most people realize) and then go on after the war. There's a lot of good material there.
Just after the war you have the Intercontinental rail lines finishing, indian wars with the Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Ciowa, and others, and huge mining booms in Nevada, Colorado. Later, in the Dakotas and Montana, the beginnings of the old cattle driving trails.
The main thing with a western game, and the thing I've run up against repeatedly while trying to run one, is to avoid getting so caught up in historical issues that you lose sight of the important factor: it's a game.
Your players don't know when most of this stuff happened, and even if they do, it's fiction and therefore you can change history.
Hanlon's Razor - Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.