The Wild Wild West - Dates

Dates

The series is set during the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant, 1869–77; occasional episodes indicate a more precise date.

• "The Night of the Glowing Corpse" is set during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1.
• "The Night of the Eccentrics" takes place four years after the execution in 1867 of Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico.
• In "The Night of the Brain" Artemus Gordon shows James West a newspaper dated July 12, 1872. West states, "July 12, that's an interesting date, but it happens to be tomorrow." After they again get tomorrow's newspaper and we see the date: July 14, 1872.
• "The Night of the Lord of Limbo" takes place seven years after the end of the Civil War, making it 1872.
• "The Night of the Whirring Death" opens with the caption San Francisco 1874.
• In "The Night of the Flaming Ghost", West says, "If the real John Brown had lived he'd be almost 75 years old by now." Brown was born May 9, 1800.
• In "The Night of the Arrow", a cavalry officer resigns his commission as of April 6, 1874.
• In "The Night of the Avaricious Actuary", the heading of a letter shown on screen is dated 1875.
• In "The Night of the Underground Terror", the sadistic commandant of a POW camp is said to have escaped justice for ten years, presumably from the end of the war in 1865.
• In "The Night that Terror Stalked the Town", Loveless has a headstone prepared for West, showing his birthdate as July 2, 1842 – 87 years before the birth of Robert Conrad. If West's age in that episode was equal to that of the actor who played him, the events depicted are 87 years before the episode was shot, i.e. in 1879 or 1878.