What is the date....
...that the action is set?
What would the windmill have powered, please?
I have not watched the film for a couple of years or so but I think there is a windmill near someone's ranch house. In any event it would be for water.
As for the time of the setting....It narrows down to around 1870 to around 1890. I believe the Apaches were all subdued finally by about 1890..so consider post Civil War to 25 years later. The revolvers used were Colt Single-Action Army models which came out in 1873 if you want to get technical with another clue. But these models were used incorrectly in many western movies that supposedly took place pre-1873.
Thank you - my supposition about electricity was wrong then - I was not aware of windpowered water pumps, but it is perfectly logical and possibly went back to ancient times.
Us second half of the 20th century folk - mostly take powered equipment for granted but before electricity - I guess wind and water were both harnessed in many different ways
I found a NASA report from 1990!
https://wind.nrel.gov/public/library/shepherd.pdf
AND some illustrations that may have developed in antique times
http://www.amusingplanet.com/2014/07/the-ancient-windmills-of-nashtifan.html
They're still in use on farms and ranches; you can buy brand-new ones from the Aermotor Windmill Company and several other manufacturers.
shareThat seems very sensible as it is just a matter of time before electricity may become a scarce resource whereas wind will remain a force not needing capture and transmission for as long as the world continues in its current state.
shareLaramie, Wyoming was founded in the mid 1860s. Fort Laramie, Wyoming was a US army post from 1849 to 1890. Thus the confusion over which Laramie Lockhart comes from would have been plausible for about 25 years.
Will Lockhart wishes his teamsters good luck returning to Laramie when he pays them off, and when he corners the villain at the end Lockhart says he came a thousand miles to kill him.
But it would not have been logical to transport goods from either Laramie to a town in New Mexico. Before, during, and after the Civil War, goods from Independence, Missouri were transported to Santa Fe, New Mexico along the Santa Fe Trail. In the 1860s and 1870s the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe railroad moved west in Kansas and Colorado, shortening the Santa Fe Trail. The AT&SF reached Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1880, and from then on a town in New Mexico would have been only one or two hundred miles from the nearest railroad station.
So this seems to put The Man From Laramie in or before 1880, or maybe in an alternate universe where the Santa Fe Trail started from Laramie, Wyoming instead of from Independence, Missouri, and there was a Union Pacific railroad but not an Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe railroad, and it was thus normal for freighters to haul cargo from Laramie to villages in New Mexico.
I believe that Charley O'Leary, the half Irish half Apache friend of Will Lockhart, says he will go north to Apache country to find out what is up with the local Apaches who have been on the warpath lately.
Since Coronado is supposed to be in New Mexico, the Apaches to the north should be the Jicarilla Apaches who lived in northern New Mexico. But the Jicarilla War was in 1849-1855. I don't know about later Jicarilla hostilities. Thus it seems hard to fit the look and apparent era of The Man From Laramie with the era when hostile Apaches could be found to the north in New Mexico.
The opening titles say The Man From Laramie was shot in New Mexico. They don't say that the story happens there. If the movie does not says that Coronado is in New Mexico, then it could be in southern Arizona with several Apache tribes living north of Coronado. In real history there were Apache wars, uprisings, and outbreaks on and off from about 1860 to 1886. Thus if The Man From Laramie does not say that Coronado is in New Mexico then it could happen more or less in the 1860s to 1880s - in real life more or less.
But of course a movie set more or less in the wild west instead of real history could have Apache wars and uprisings at times that were peaceful in real history.