Help with Wild West Sandbox Campaign

[Shoot Da Moon]

Okay, here's the set-up;

I've been kicking around this sandbox campaign (system is GURPS) where the PCs are travellers to a boom town in the alternate history wild west. The exact alternate history isn't that important (it's bascially the same as in the RPG Aces & Eights: Shattered Frontier), but the town is. The PCs will be start out as newcomers looking for a job and maybe pursuing personal goals, but random events and NPC ambitions will intrude on their lives eventually in some manner.

If you've read the Knights of the Dinner Table plotline where Brian runs a Cattlepunk game, you have an idea.

What I want advice and suggestions with, is plothooks and NPC personalities.

What I have for plot hooks so far is;
* An organised crime gang is running an extortion racket, threatening businesses with arson.

* Another gang is rigging a town council election, hoping to seize political power and crush the other gang.

* A man hires the PCs to guard some sealed documents in a hidden safe for a month while he is out of town. The man is an undercover spy for the North (the United States of America), the documents are maps of the town layout and reveal that the US army is planning to takeover the town in one way or another.

* One night, Apache raiders charge in, steal various supplies and set fire to a few buildings. The next day, the town authorities attempt to round up a posse to find the Apache camp and stop them.

* The owner of a big saloon hires a PC to secretly deliver packages all around town discretely. The owner is secretly running an numbers lottery, and the packages are coded messages to gamblers. The criminal gangs would want a cut of the profits from this racket if they knew.

[Arranis Thelmos]

* The discovery of gold has turned the quiet little town into a crowded, raging, lawless, Hooverville. A sheriff is needed. Rest of the adventure follows the plot of the movie Support Your Local Sheriff.

* Organized crime racket hires the party to rob a train, only to find that the cargo was medicine for an ailing town.

* A shifty NPC hires the players to rob a giant gold nugget from the local bank, only for the party to realize its larger, and heavier than the party thought.

* A historian is trying to chronicle the events of the west (kudos if you name him 'Fredrick Jackson Turner') and wants the PCs to escort him as he writes about the west. At the end he'll give them a copy of his thesis (kudos if you use the real Fredrick Jackson Turner's 'Frontier Thesis').

[Jay R]

A range war. Two ranchers are hiring gunmen.

A single corrupt official is trying to influence the election with intimidation.

A miner has discovered gold, and is afraid others will find out.

A small farm is run by freed slaves, or Irish, or Chinese, and lots of people don't want them here.

A rancher has dammed the river on his property, preventing all others from getting enough water.

Seven gunmen are hired by a small village to stop the bandits who keep raiding.

Really, go watch any western movie or TV show. All the work's already been done for you.