Fredrick Jackson Turner Significance Of The Frontier Essay

Although the frontier has fascinated Americans since the colonial era, it first came to prominence as a true ideological concept late in the nineteenth century. In 1890, Frederick Jackson Turner, sought to discover an antidote to the "germ theory" of history, which argued that all American institutions evolved from European precedents transplanted into the New World by the colonists, argued that the frontier was more important than any other single factor in shaping American history and culture. An influential address delivered before the American Historical Association, Turner's "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" suggests that the process of westward migration across the North American continent unleashed forces directly responsible for
Nevertheless as the century had rolled on a multitude of peoples had soon discovered that the land they had acquired was gone or soon to be gone, in 1827 the Secretary of War had prophesied that it would take nearly 500 years in order to fill the West, unfortunately this was inaccurate on all accounts. In order to preserve such land the Government had seeded national parks such as Yellowstone in 1872, followed by Yosemite and Sequoia in 1890, thus with the passing of the Indian nations, the frontier was symbolic to America’s new beginnings, Americas freedom of territory and individuality. Nevertheless unlike Europeans Americans had flourished in the lands and saw it for its true value, as time had progressed they had managed the soil for what it was and profited. In truth, very few city dwellers had actually migrated from the City life to the rural West, in fact very few had enough money to transport themselves to the West and raise livestock as well as expensive