Hico Texas is a small town to the southwest of Fort Worth. The Chamber of Commerce advertises Hico as the perfect weekend getaway with small town charm "Where Everybody is Somebody." They also try to attract interest in the town by propagating the idea that their former resident was actually the escaped Billy the Kid. I intend to discuss the implications of this, and look at Hico as an authentic tourist destination. I will explore the history and haptic features of Hico as well as investigate Hico’s uniqueness, or lack of, to classify it as a true experienced place or a non place.
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Public interest in Billy the Kid is a strange topic because his legend is mostly just that, legend. It is said that he killed twenty one men, but historians think the number is closer to five. Billy became the vessel for romanticized stories about the Wild West. There have been countless songs and fictional books with Billy the Kid as the main character and he has been the subject of no less than seventeen films. Young Guns II featured not only Billy the Kid, but Hico’s version of him. In this clip, you can see how they propagate the idea that Billy escaped into anonymity for all those years after his supposed death.