The American frontier was officially closed, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 1890. Yet more homesteads were settled in the first few decades of the twentieth century than in the entire nineteenth century.

"Frontier anxiety," then, really was caused not by the closing of the frontier, but by the perception that the frontier was closing, argues David Wrobel. As early as the 1870s and through the 1930s, many Americans believed an important era had ended and worried about how this closure would affect society and democracy.

The perceived expiration of a uniquely American way of...

What does it mean to live in the West today? Do people tend to identify with states, with regions, or with the larger West? This book examines the development of regional identity in the American West, demonstrating that it is a regionally diverse entity made up of many different wests--Great Plains, Southwest, Rocky Mountains, and more--in which American regionalism finds its fullest expression.

These fourteen original essays tell how a sense of place emerged among residents of various regions and how a sense of those places was developed by people outside of them. Wrobel and Steiner...

You can see them cruising for Indian art in Santa Fe, waiting for Old Faithful at Yellowstone, or pausing for shrimp cocktails on San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf. The American West attracts vacationers of every stripe, who comb its varied landscapes for the ultimate trip. And for better or worse, those who come to see this multifaceted region have changed what they have come to see.

Seeing and Being Seen explores the history of tourism in the American West and examines its effects on both the tourists and the places and people they visit. Scholars from the humanities, social...

Whether seen as a land of opportunity or as paradise lost, the American West took shape in the nation's imagination with the help of those who wrote about it; but two groups who did much to shape that perception are often overlooked today.

Promoters trying to lure settlers and investors to the West insisted that the frontier had already been tamed-that the only frontiers remaining were those of opportunity. Through posters, pamphlets, newspaper articles, and other printed pieces, these boosters literally imagined places into existence by depicting backwater areas as settled, culturally...

The American West has influenced important national developments throughout the twentieth century, not only in the cultural arena, but also in economic development, in political ideology and action, and in natural resource conservation and preservation. Using regionalism as a lens for illuminating these national trends, America's West: A History, 1890-1950 examines this region's history and explores its influence on the rest of America. Moving chronologically from the late nineteenth- to the mid-twentieth century, David M. Wrobel examines turn-of-the-century expansion, the Progressive Era,...

The American West has influenced important national developments throughout the twentieth century, not only in the cultural arena, but also in economic development, in political ideology and action, and in natural resource conservation and preservation. Using regionalism as a lens for illuminating these national trends, America's West: A History, 1890-1950 examines this region's history and explores its influence on the rest of America. Moving chronologically from the late nineteenth- to the mid-twentieth century, David M. Wrobel examines turn-of-the-century expansion, the Progressive Era,...