The Fading Frontier

By 1890, the frontier line was no longer discernable. That is, all unsettled areas were enclosed by areas of settlement. Soon there would be no more land left to explore...



Frederick Jackson Turner wrote "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" in 1893., where he noted that the free land (land open to development) was going or had already gone.



It was predicted in 1827 that at least 500 years would be necessary to completely explore and develop the western U.S. Obviously, this was not true, and the speed at which the land was going drove home the point that the land was not inexhaustble. A plan was then developed to take measures to preserve it: The National Parks. Yellowstone was the first opened, in 1872, and Yosemite and Sequoia followed in 1890.

The passing of the frontier ended the romantic phase of internal development.



Safety Valve Theory: when life in the city brought unemployment, people would head to the frontier, start farming, and prosper there. Few truly did, for they either did not know how to farm or had no means of transport to the frontier.
The frontier did, however, lure immigrant farmers who were less entralled by city life.
The real safety valves were the great western cities, such as Chicago, Denver, and San Francisco. (In 1880, the area west of the Rockies to the Pacific Coast was the most urbanized region in America.

Turner suggested that real American history was the history of the colonization of the great west, a constantly developing process that began with Columbus heading west and discovering the West Indies, and so forth, to the mainland, across the mountains and plains to the Pacific.

Important Points Concerning the Trans-Mississippi West:
*Where the Native Americans' last struggle against colonization took place (and where any reamining live today)
*Where Anglo culture collided with Hispanic culture, sparking a competition for dominance in the New World
*Where America faced across the Pacific to Asia
*The scale and severity of the environment, and all its magnificence and openness, molded political and social life, and the American immigration
*Where the federal government played its most conspicuous role in economic and social development, with landholding distrubution, railroad building, and irrigation projects



Westward-moving poineers and their vast landscapes were immortalized by writers such as Horte, Twain, Jackson and Parkman, and by painters such as Catlin, Remington and Bierstadt. They planted the seeds of civilization in the immense western wilderness...




(Information taken from p. 606 - 608 of "The American Pageant", Twelfth Edition)