It's a mistake to let the whole "Louis L'Amour" wrote about "real" places thing become too important. Yeah, Dad did use a lot of supposedly real locations, but he was a master of saying just enough to allow someone's memory or imagination to kick in. He really didn't describe them in any great detail, he got the reader to do that! That was his superpower.

As a writer, once you've left the "real" place it exists only in your imagination, anyway ... especially if you are writing about the past. His gift was making you feel it was real, whether it was real or not. It's just entertainment, and he was a great entertainer.