In American history, the frontier was the westernmost area of settlement at any given time in the expansion of the nation. Historians assume that the process of extending the frontier westward began in 1607 with the settlement of Jamestown and ended around 1890, when there was no longer any new land for homesteaders. Many of the attitudes and principles associated with this process--rugged individualism, conquest and progress, law and order, free enterprise, and the right to bear arms--reinforce American ideas and myths. THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT Europeans traditionally thought of a frontier as a fortified boundary line that ran through densely populated regions and separated one country from another. The American frontier, on the other hand, existed near the edge of free land--"the meeting place between savagery and civilization"--and distinguished the line of most rapid and effective Americanization. Nineteenth-century U.S. census reports defined it as the outer margin of a settled area where the density of population varied from 2 to 6 people per sq mi. Frontier settlers moved from the Atlantic coast across 3,000 miles (more than 4,800 km) of wilderness, deserts, and mountains until they were finally stopped by the Pacific Ocean. This advance averaged 10 mi (16 km) a year, but in actuality movement progressed by successive waves and at a very uneven rate. Geography and hostile Indians generally determined the boundaries of a particular frontier region. The fall line--the junction of the tidewater region and the piedmont--marked the frontier of the 17th century. Within the next 100 years, pioneers pushed the settlement line to the base of the Alleghenies. During the American Revolution, many settlers crossed the mountains into Kentucky and Tennessee and from there ventured into the Old Northwest and Old Southwest. Pioneers poured through the Cumberland Gap and down the Ohio in ever-increasing numbers. By 1820, all the lands east of the Mississippi had been carved into separate states or territories. During the next three decades, a wave of settlers moved beyond the Mississippi to the edge of the arid plains. Near the 98th meridian, the forested area gives way to rolling prairies, and farther beyond, the prairies merge with the Great Plains. As the elevation increases, the annual rainfall gradually drops below that amount necessary for conventional agriculture. For this reason, settlement halted for a long time at the bend of the Missouri and along the eastern boundary of Indian Territory (Oklahoma), Nebraska, and Kansas. Long after Missouri, Arkansas, and Iowa had been admitted to statehood, Minnesota and Wisconsin to the north still retained their frontier characteristics. The discovery of gold in California in 1848 altered the pattern of westward migration, as hordes of settlers and prospectors passed through the Great Plains, Rocky Mountains, and Great Basin to the very edge of the Pacific Ocean. By 1860, the line separating the settled region from the unoccupied zones had moved back to the Rockies. For all practical purposes, the last remaining frontier--excluding Alaska--now lay between the mountains to the west and the prairies to the east, bordered on the north by Canada and on the south by the Rio Grande. During the post-Civil War years, cattlemen moved onto the Great Plains from Texas, and farmers, or nesters, poured in from the Mississippi Valley. By 1880 the settled area included northern Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Black Hills, and the remainder of the nation's heartland was quickly being inhabited. Frontier expansion was effectively over by the end of the decade, when the superintendent of the census stated that the settlements of the West "now lie so scattered over the western half of the United States that there no longer can be said to be a frontier line." When the good land became scarce and the population of a particular region reached a certain level, the frontier line pushed forward. This rarely produced movement along an even north-south course, as the government perhaps would have preferred. Instead, the process more closely resembled that of water pouring through a break in a dam; settlers bypassed barriers in search of particularly attractive spots for relocation. Sometimes progress was rapid, as in the rush into Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama; but in other places movement was extremely slow. Much depended upon the transportation routes, hostility of the Indians, location of river valleys, fertility of the soil, or economic conditions at home. As the fingers of settlement pushed deeper into the wilderness, they invariably left vast unoccupied regions in between. This irregular advance created special problems for the army, whose tasks included protecting the settlements and government surveyors and controlling the Indians. No sooner would new military posts be completed than they would be left far behind in the interior. Many pioneers, however, chose to remain near an established fort. Some took up trades, constructed mills, opened general stores, or raised crops and livestock. After the need for military protection had lessened, many such communities developed into cities--for example, Pittsburgh, Pa.; Cincinnati, Ohio; Detroit; Chicago; Minneapolis, Minn; and St. Paul, Minn. Fur-Trade Frontier The development of the major geographical areas from wildernesses to settled lands occurred in stages, each characterized by a distinct type of people engaged in a predominating economic activity. The patterns of development varied, but the first to enter new territory usually were the fur trappers and traders. These men moved in advance of civilization, opening new trails into the wilderness and crossing the continent decades ahead of the miners, cattlemen, and farmers. Many preferred solitude to association with other settlers; they adapted to the ways of the Indians and took Indian women for wives or concubines. Some operated as free trappers and exchanged their yearly catch of furs for guns, knives, traps, whiskey, tobacco, and other supplies at the closest trading posts. Others worked for the major companies that dominated the business before its rapid decline (see \Tfur trade\t). Although the trappers and traders, known as \Tmountain men\t, spread disease and whiskey among the Indians and ruthlessly exploited the beaver and other furbearing animals, they played a significant role in the opening of each frontier between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. The fur-trading business flourished during the first four decades of the 19th century; thereafter, changing styles, reduced prices, depletion of resources, and advancing civilization brought about its decline. Some fur traders and trappers later served as guides for emigrant companies; others settled down to raise livestock or to farm. Jim \TBridger\t, one of the more renowned and free-spirited mountain men, operated a famous trading post near South Pass in Wyoming between 1843 and 1855. Another former mountain man, William Wolfskill, became one of California's most important landowners and is generally credited with being the father of that state's modern wine industry. Cattlemen's Frontier Each new region also had its "cowpens," or cattle-raising, stage, which usually followed that of the trappers and traders and preceded that of the farmers. In early Massachusetts, cattle raising was important in the Charles River valley; it was later established in upper New York and the Mohawk Valley. For a short time, cattlemen raised stock among the canebrakes and marshes of the tidewater region, before retreating into the piedmont and mountain valleys beyond the fall line. Having crossed the Appalachians, the raising of cattle, sheep, and swine became increasingly important as far west as the Mississippi River. It developed into a bonanza industry on the grasslands of the Great Plains, which stretched from the Rio Grande to the Canadian border. Soon after the Civil War, the practice of driving cattle from Texas to the northern markets commenced; it continued for the next 30 years, until the railroads and packinghouses had moved closer to sources of supply. By the mid 1880s the range had become overstocked, and barbed-wire fences and railroads crisscrossed the Great Plains. By this time, homesteaders were winning the battle with the ranchers for dominance of the public domain, and ranching was changing from a frontier industry to a corporate enterprise. Then came the severe winters of 1885-86 and 1886-87, which destroyed more than three-fourths of the herds on the northern plains. Soon after, fenced pasture and farms replaced the open range, and the era of round-ups and trail drives was ended. Today legend has transformed the \Tcowboy\t of this period into the epitome of the frontier hero, and frontier buffs throughout the world try to recapture a life-style that is, in fact, largely fictitious. Mining Frontier The mining frontier advanced in a less orderly fashion than that of the traders and herdsmen. It sometimes lagged far behind the line of settlements, as in Georgia in the 1820s and 1830s; in other instances mining operations were begun long before communities of settlers arrived, as was the case with the lead mining in Illinois and Missouri and the goldfields of California. The California \Tgold rush\t was set off by the discovery of gold on the American River in January 1848. It involved the largest migration of people over the longest distances in the briefest span of time in the history of the world. Gold seekers left scars along every stream and gulch from one end of the far West to the other. They rushed back and forth wherever opportunity beckoned--from California to Colorado and Nevada, then to New Mexico and Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and finally, in 1876, to the Black Hills of South Dakota. Like the fur trading of the early 19th century, mining enjoyed its greatest boom in the mountainous regions. In less than a generation it was transformed from a frontier industry to a corporate enterprise. Unlike other movements, mining assumed an urban characteristic from the beginning. Its workers measured property by the foot rather than by the acre or section. Their activities probably hastened the civilizing process of the American West by a quarter of a century or more. Farming Frontier In addition to the trappers, miners, and cattlemen, many other specific groups of people contributed to the development of the frontier--explorers; missionaries; soldiers; builders of turnpikes, railroads, and canals; land speculators; and Indians. But perhaps most significant was the farmer. Wherever farmers appeared, they changed the face of the land, destroying forever its virgin characteristics and pushing settlements to the edge of the wilderness. Whereas furs, minerals, and grass had attracted other pioneers, the rich soils of the river valleys and prairies attracted the farmers. Unlike their predecessors, they set out to conquer nature and not to compromise with it. Trees and Indians had to be eradicated like weeds and varmints, while the soil was cultivated. For three centuries, most Americans lived within easy reach of cheap land. They often made no attempt to buy it even at $1.25 an acre, but simply built a log cabin or sod house anywhere on the public domain they chose to squat. In time they cleared a spot large enough for crops and a garden to support their families and even to produce a surplus for sale. They grubbed the stumps, built roads, laid out towns, and established churches and schools. As the countryside began to fill up, many settlers sold their homes and land and moved farther west to start the process all over again. Six or seven moves during one's lifetime was not unusual. As one region emerged from the frontier stage, another entered it. The government of each new frontier area derived elements from the regions just left, and each move westward contributed to this process of change and growth. THE LURE OF THE FRONTIER A number of factors lured men and women to new frontiers: worn-out land and other economic impediments at home; available roads, canals, riverboats, and later railroads; and the dream of adventure and romance. Moving toward the setting sun became a compulsive urge, and once an individual caught the fever, no logical argument against pulling up stakes could change his mind. To millions of Americans the frontier was a place to go to simply because it was there. The fertile soil, abundant game, and lack of restrictions constituted the stuff of dreams. Even though the frontier never quite lived up to the vision, many who arrived there felt compelled to keep the dream alive for others rather than to admit the truth. Perhaps this explains the tendency of people of the frontier to exaggerate, speaking of the good things as very good and the bad as very bad. The dime novels of Ned \TBuntline\t were based upon pure fantasy, but so was much of what Capt. John \TSmith\t wrote about the Virginia frontier three centuries earlier. What people believe to be true is often as important as the truth itself, and generations of Americans have grown up with the idea that the frontier during the closing decades of the 19th century represented this country at its most adventurous, as well as its most violent. In its frontier days, America possessed almost limitless natural resources, and the government distributed those resources liberally. Congress set the pattern in 1796 with a minimum reserved price for land. This principle remained in effect, theoretically at least, until the \TPreemption Act\t of 1841, which allowed squatters to purchase the land they already occupied at a base price of $1.25 an acre for 160 acres (about 65 ha). The so-called log-cabin legislation eased the way for passage of the \THomestead Act\t of 1862. Under this act, title to a quarter section of land could be obtained by paying a small fee and establishing the claim by occupying the land for five years. With basic modifications, the act remained in effect until 1977; but it failed to create the utopia that its sponsors had promised, and it seldom gave the working man a true fresh start. The Homestead Act has been called "a wager by the federal government of 160 acres of land against a man's ability to live and survive on it for five years." In the East, where rain is plentiful, a 160-acre farm was considered more than adequate, but a farmer on the Great Plains needed two to four times that for extensive agriculture, and he needed several thousand acres if he was a rancher. The situation was worsened by certain congressional amendments to the act; these inadvertently allowed speculators to take advantage of various loopholes and acquire extraordinarily large holdings of the best land. As a result, many settlers were forced to buy from the railroads and other speculators, and the full intent of the Homestead Act was never realized. Because of the forbidding features of the Great Plains, farmers did not move there in large numbers until after 1870. The adaptation of the windmill, the invention of barbed wire, and the development of dry farming eventually paved the way for the most rapid land rush of all. Within two decades settlers populated Kansas and Nebraska and swarmed over the grasslands of Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana. The conquest of the Great Plains proved more difficult than previous frontier experiences because of the harsh climate and more formidable Indians. Even so, it took place in a relatively brief period of time. Between 1870 and 1900 approximately 430 million acres of public domain were occupied or brought under cultivation. This represented about 40 percent of the total land area occupied and improved since 1607. FRONTIER LIFE The myth of the American frontier as a bucolic place where one could do as one pleased has continued to influence popular attitudes. In reality, the process of opening a wilderness region and wresting a living from the land took a heavy toll. Pioneer women suffered especially, as the stories of Hamlin \TGarland\t and other writers so poignantly reveal. The incessant burden of hard work, childbearing, and sickness, as well as fear of Indian attacks, caused most women to grow old before the age of 40. Worse yet was the stupefying loneliness brought on by the lack of social contact with friends or neighbors for months at a time. Characteristics The raw frontier experience also fostered boisterous politics, rude manners, disregard for conventions, contempt for intellectual and cultural pursuits, mobility of population, unmitigated waste, and the exploitation of natural resources. The predominant spirit was to take while the taking was good, and frontier history includes many accounts of men who carved out empires and acquired great wealth within a few years. But the cattle kings, railroad and town builders, lumber barons, and mineowners sometimes lost fortunes as quickly as they made them. Still, there was always another tomorrow; for whatever faults the frontiersman possessed, he was usually ready to start again. Small-mindedness and petty thievery were rare among frontier people. A stranger was considered honest until proved otherwise, and it was taken for granted that any traveler stopping at a farmhouse was welcome to have supper and to spend the night; an offer to pay for such hospitality would have been taken as an insult. Locks symbolized an impeachment of public honesty and integrity, and frontier people frequently did not secure the doors of their homes or even their places of business. A Texas historian declared that there was not one lock on a single building or office in the town of Colorado City throughout the 1880s. In warm weather a merchant frequently did not bother to close his store before going home at night. Similarly, a man's word on the frontier was held to be as good as his bond. The owners of various mercantile enterprises at the crossing of Red River near present-day Vernon, Tex., sold supplies and clothing on credit, or advanced money without collateral, to literally hundreds of cowboys and total strangers between 1874 and 1894 without losing a dime. Some customers rode hundreds of miles out of their way to settle accounts as soon as they had the money. Like the miners in California, frontiersmen might shoot or hang a thief or murderer in short order, but they would rarely deceive him. An admirable characteristic of Americans has been their ability to organize themselves smoothly and swiftly into a body politic. But the very ease with which town charters could be drawn up, laws passed, and officials elected sometimes fostered too much self-confidence in the community or lulled the political conscience of the ordinary person. The simplicity of frontier governmental apparatus made it easy for lawless elements to seize what government there was. When this happened, local leaders formed \Tvigilante\t groups to apprehend and punish the guilty and to put their weak governments back in order. But the primary danger of frontier vigilantism was that some men continued to take the law into their own hands after regular judicial processes had been instituted. Most frontier people were friendly, hard working, and just, and for every act of violence during the frontier period, there were thousands of acts of kindness, generosity, and sacrifice. People usually worked together harmoniously for the good of the community. The majority literally practiced the biblical adage and served as their brother's keeper. They gave their time, money, and sometimes their lives in behalf of friends or total strangers in moments of misfortune or extreme danger. If a neighbor lost his crop or if sickness prevented him from planting at the proper time, the whole neighborhood donated part of their harvest or time. If a bank threatened to foreclose a mortgage or an official tried to seize a man's livestock or tools because he could not pay his taxes, friends and neighbors frequently banded together to prevent it. The Frontier Heritage The transition from rural to urban society has long been accomplished, but the frontier remains very much a part of the American heritage. For example, many Americans continue to keep and sometimes revere guns, even though guns have not been survival necessities for more than three generations. American folklore tends to support the image of tough, aggressive, and unafraid heroes who tamed the wild frontier. This has contributed to the commonly expressed philosophy that winning is everything, whether on the football field, used car lot, or in the board room of a large corporation. Perhaps this explains why frontier types such as the cowboy, mountain man, or outlaw have endured so long in American literature and legend. They went out and got what they wanted with their own two hands, frequently by violent means. Their deeds, real and imaginary, have served as a cultural metaphor of how Americans view themselves. However, in terms of actual frontier life, the emphasis is misleading. In many respects it is remarkable that the American frontier was settled in as orderly a fashion as it was. TURNER'S FRONTIER THESIS The best-known interpretation of the American frontier experience was proposed by Frederick Jackson \TTurner\t. As a little-known historian from the University of Wisconsin, Turner read a paper, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in Chicago in 1893. According to the 32-year-old professor, "The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward explain American development." Turner enunciated what has been called the "safety valve" theory of U.S. history: "Whenever social conditions . . . tended to press upon labor, or political restraints to impede the freedom of the mass, there was this gate of escape to the free conditions of the frontier. . . . Men would not accept inferior wages and a permanent position of social insubordination when this promised land of freedom and equality was theirs for the taking." He also concluded that the frontier decreased American dependence on England and that the true point of view in American history of the United States "is not the Atlantic Coast, but the West." Turner's hypothesis altered the course of American historical scholarship, which at that time was focused almost exclusively on New England and the East. Among other things, Turner suggested that in the course of the westward movement forces were created or released that shaped American ideas of government and contributed to the evolution of its economic and social institutions. For the rest of his life Turner and his students tested the application of the frontier thesis in various periods and places without serious challenge by critics. During the 1930s and 1940s, the tide ran strongly against Turner's ideas regarding the democratizing influence of the frontier. Charles Wilson Pierson and other historians criticized his thesis severely and maintained that it was an inadequate guide to American development. More recently, Ray Allen Billington, Wilbur Jacobs, and other historians have placed the thesis in better perspective. Although aware of its many faults, they nevertheless believe that it should stand upon reasonableness rather than upon proof. Turner observed in 1893 that the open frontier was already an environment of the past and that Americans should of necessity move on to another chapter of history. Regardless of the validity of his thesis as a whole, few will quarrel with his assertion that the American frontier experience will never be repeated. W. Eugene Hollon Bibliography: Billington, Ray Allen, Frederick Jackson Turner: Historian, Scholar, Teacher (1973), Westward Expansion: A History of the American Frontier, 4th ed. (1974), The Frontier Thesis (1977), and Western to the Pacific (1979); Clark, Thomas D., Frontier America: The Westward Movement, 2d ed. (1969) and The Great American Frontier (1975); Hawgood, John A., America's Western Frontiers (1967); Jacobs, Wilbur R., Frederick Jackson Turner's Legacy (1964); Limerick, P.N., The Legacy of Conquest (1987); Merk, Frederick, History of the Westward Movement (1975); Nash, R., Wilderness and the American Mind, rev. 3d ed. (1982); Paul, Rodman W., The Frontier and the American West (1971); Ride, M., and Billingotn, R.A., eds., America's Frontier Story (1980); Taylor, George R., ed., The Turner Thesis (1936); Turner, Frederick Jackson, The Frontier in American History (1920; repr. 1985); Van Every, D., Ark of Empire (1988).