Is Crooks Springs a real town in Netflix's American Primeval? Details explored

If you've been binge-watching Netflix's Western miniseries American Primeval, you might be wondering if Crooks Springs is a real part of the 1857 American landscape. Well, Crooks Springs is not a real place. It's all the brainchild of the show's creator and writer, Mark L. Smith.

He came up with this town to serve as the setting for the drama and adventure in the series. Even though it feels real, Crooks Springs is just a fantasy, a place that lives only in the world of the show. So, if you're planning a road trip to visit this Wild West hotspot, you might want to save your gas money!

American Primeval, set amid real historical happenings like the Utah War and the Mountain Meadows Massacre, mixes truth and fiction. The place called Crooks Springs, which is supposed to be somewhere beyond Utah's big Wasatch Mountains is a metaphor for living through tough times and finding a safe spot.

There's a real Crooks Springs in Missouri, but it's got nothing to do with the TV series. It's just a little town named after Lee Crook, but it came to be much later than what's happening in the show.

In American Primeval, though, Crooks Springs means more than just a spot on the map. It's like a symbol of a haven and a chance for folks to start over fresh.

What is the historical backdrop of American Primeval?

Take a trip back to the chaotic year of 1857 with American Primeval, which drops you right in the middle of a fiery clash between Native American tribes, Mormon settlers, the U.S. Army, and the pioneers. One of the main events that'll keep you on the edge of your seat is the Mountain Meadows Massacre – talk about a dark chapter in history.

It's when Mormon militia, dressed up like Native Americans, go on a terrifying rampage and kill over a hundred innocent people who were just passing through. Director Pete Berg got the idea for American Primeval from a story he read about the Utah War.

In an interview with Netflix in January 2025, he talked about how this conflict hit home with him:

“The Mountain Meadows Massacre became, for our narrative purposes, an inciting incident.”

What makes American Primeval even more interesting is that it brings real-life heroes like Brigham Young and Jim Bridger into the mix. These guys aren't just fictitious; they were there, living through it all. Bridger, especially, is like the show's rock. He started a fort and saw all the chaos firsthand.

American Primeval's Crooks Springs is a home base for the story. It's a clever way to weave these characters into real history. So, you get all the drama of a good story, but you're also learning about what life was really like back then.

Crooks Springs is a symbol of hope and survival in American Primeval

Although Crooks Springs isn't a real place, the way it's shown in American Primeval taps into the feeling of wanting to be safe and belong somewhere. For Sara Rowell, it's a dream spot where she hopes her son Devin can do well after tough things happen at the start of the show.

This town is a storytelling trick to show a peaceful place in the middle of all the chaos and violence. In the show, a real-life person from history, Jim Bridger, finds Crooks Springs past the Wasatch Mountains in Utah. It's all peaceful and quiet there: a big change from the rough and tough frontier everyone else is dealing with.

The team didn't build Crooks Springs in Utah; they made it in New Mexico, using spots like Cochiti Pueblo and Los Alamos to make it look like Utah.

American Primeval blurs the lines between fact and fiction

American Primeval manages to strike a balance between sticking to the facts and adding a dash of creativity to make the story grab you with real people from the past, like Brigham Young and Wild Bill Hickman.

And Julie O'Keefe, who's the Indigenous cultural consultant for the show, makes sure everything from the clothes the characters wear to the words they say are spot on. But the made-up place called Crooks Springs lets the show go into what it's like to survive and connect with others in those times.

As producer Eric Newman noted in an interview with Tudum,

“The show offers an anti-nostalgic, truthful look at our history.”

American Primeval takes those classic ideas about the frontier and makes them feel new and exciting again.

Sure, it's based on true events like the Utah War and when Fort Bridger changed hands, but it's the Crooks Springs part that lets you go into the imagination and feel what life was like back then, with all the ups and downs people had.