Prairie Frontier

Examples of Prairie Frontier in the following topics:

• The End of the Frontier

  • In 1890, the frontier line had broken up (census maps defined the frontier line as a line beyond which the population was less than two persons per square mile).
  • The frontier's impact on popular culture was enormous, as evidenced by dime novels, Wild West shows, and, after 1910, Western movies set on the frontier.
  • Historian Karel Bicha explains that nearly 600,000 American farmers sought cheap land by moving to the prairie frontier of the Canadian West from 1897 to 1914.
  • Nevertheless, the ethos and storyline of the "American frontier" had passed.
  • The cowboy, the quintessential symbol of the American frontier, ca. 1887.

• Pioneer Women

  • Although the eastern image of farm life on the prairies emphasizes the isolation of the lonely farmer, in reality, rural folk created a rich social life for themselves.
  • Childhood on the American frontier is contested territory among academics.
  • Historians Katherine Harris, in Long Vistas: Women and Families on Colorado Homesteads (1993), and Elliott West, in Growing Up with the Country: Childhood on the Far Western Frontier (1989), write that a rural upbringing allowed children to break loose from urban hierarchies of age and gender, promoted family interdependence, and in the end, produced children who were more self-reliant, mobile, adaptable, responsible, independent, and in touch with nature than their urban or eastern counterparts.

• Ranchers, Cowboys, and Cattle

  • The prairie and desert lands of what is today Mexico and the western United States were well suited to "open range" grazing.
  • One of the most well-known range wars of the American frontier, the Johnson County War has since become a highly mythologized and symbolic story of the Wild West, and over the years, variations of the storyline have come to include some of its most famous historical figures.

• Frontier Revivals

  • In the new frontier regions, the revivals of the Second Great Awakening took the form of vast and exhilarating camp meetings.
  • In the newly settled frontier regions, the revivals of the Second Great Awakening took the form of camp meetings.
  • They were an integral part of the frontier expansion of the Second Great Awakening.

• Dust Bowl Migrants

  • The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to American prairie lands in the 1930s.
  • The Dust Bowl, also known as the Dirty Thirties, was a period of severe dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to American prairie lands in the 1930s, particularly in 1934 and 1936.

• Discontent on the Frontier

  • Early frontier areas east of the Appalachian Mountains included the Connecticut River valley.
  • Two events in 1763 severely tested colonial relations with American Indian tribes on the frontier: Pontiac's War and the Conestoga Massacre.
  • The Warfare on the North American frontier was brutal, and the killing of prisoners, the targeting of civilians, and other atrocities were widespread.
  • In the aftermath of the French and Indian War, the frontier of Pennsylvania remained unsettled.

• Mill Towns and Company Towns

  • "In the nineteenth century, saws and axes made in New England cleared the forests of Ohio; New England ploughs broke the prairie sod, New England scales weighed wheat and meat in Texas; New England serge clothed businessmen in San Francisco; New England cutlery skinned hides to be tanned in Milwaukee and sliced apples to be dried in Missouri; New England whale oil lit lamps across the continent; New England blankets warmed children by night and New England textbooks preached at them by day; New England guns armed the troops; and New England dies, lathes, looms, forges, presses and screwdrivers outfitted factories far and wide. " - Jane Jacobs, The Economy of Cities, 1969

• The End of the Open Range

  • The prairie and desert lands of what is today Mexico and the western United States, were well-suited to "open range" grazing.
  • Unlike the eastern United States, the western prairies of the 19th century were vast, undeveloped, and uncultivated, with scarce, widely separated sources of water.

• The Second Great Awakening

  • The Second Great Awakening served as an organizing process that created, "a religious and educational infrastructure" across the western frontier that encompassed social networks, a religious journalism that provided mass communication, and church-related colleges.
  • The Female Missionary Society and the Maternal Association, both active in Utica, New York, were highly organized and financially sophisticated women's organizations responsible for many of the evangelical converts of the New York frontier.
  • Each denomination that participated in the Second Great Awakening had assets that allowed it to thrive on the frontier.
  • The Methodists had an efficient organization that depended on ministers known as "circuit riders," who sought out people in remote frontier locations.
  • The circuit riders came from among the common people, which helped them establish rapport with the frontier families they hoped to convert.

• Literature and the Depression

  • and As I Lay Dying, Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, Daphne du Maurier's Jamaica Inn, the first issue of Life magazine, Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie, F.