He used a variety of source material for his fictional town taken from various areas in eastern Colorado, and Centennial is not meant to represent a single settlement.

This is roughly halfway between the Colorado towns of Greeley and Kersey, in central Weld County on the High Plains about 25 miles (40 km) east of the base of the Rockies.

Many episodes in the book are loosely based on events in eastern Colorado and south-east Wyoming, which for novelistic reasons are brought to one locale.

There was no Venneford Ranch, no prairie town of Line Camp, no Skimmerhorn cattle drive of 1868, no Centennial.

Charles Goodnight, one of the great men of the west, did haul the corpse of his partner home in a lead box.