The Significance of the Frontier in American History

In his influential 1893 essay, American historian Frederick Jackson Turner examines the significance of the frontier in shaping American history, character, institutions, economy, politics, and culture. He presented this essay at the Chicago World’s Fair, speaking to an audience newly aware that the Western frontier was gone, according to the 1890 census. This census revelation deeply shook ideas of American identity and exceptionalism predicated on the existence of the frontier. Myths of rugged pioneers conquering the “Wild West” still dominated American ethos, even as the contiguous frontier line had officially vanished. Turner highlights the census finding: No frontier remained in the continental United States. For decades, the frontier had served as a release valve for social tensions and reinvigorated American individualism through continual reinvention and rebirth. Its closing marked the conclusion of the first epoch of American history in Turner’s view, raising uncertainties about how the nation would maintain its vibrancy and democratic spirit without open frontiers. This challenge resonated with Turner’s audience, who shared concerns about what the frontier’s disappearance would mean for the future.

For Turner, the frontier exemplifies the theme of The Frontier as a Source of National Character, influenced by European Versus Indigenous Culture and The Impact of Geography on the American Nation.

This guide references Turner’s essay collection, The Frontier in American History, published in 1920 by H. Holt and Company.

Content Warning: The source material uses discredited terms and ideas that were current in the 1890s regarding the Indigenous peoples and cultures of North America. It expresses racist assumptions about (white) European-style “civilization” and “superiority,” and the “heroic” nature of the frontier project. The source material and guide deal closely with themes relating to land settlement, Indigenous displacement, and frontier violence.

Turner opens by defining the frontier as “the meeting point between savagery and civilization” (3) tracing its progression as white settlement expanded westward over centuries of American history. In the colonial era, the Appalachian Mountains marked the 18th-century frontier border between coastal English settlements and Indigenous American lands. Turner periodizes frontiers in stages, with new stages bringing regression to so-called “primitive” conditions as settlements had to tame the wilderness. With the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the frontier leaped over the Mississippi River basin, rapidly expanding the nation’s boundaries as settlers poured in. The frontier also jumped nonsequentially during events like the California Gold Rush, creating a Pacific frontier while areas like the Great Plains were still unsettled by white inhabitants. In the early 19th century, the Missouri River and harsh arid plains delineated the frontier. Finally, by the 1890 census, American settlement had reached the Pacific coast. Turner emphasizes that each westward advance only occurred through violence, as brutal wars enabled white settlers to continually displace and enact genocide against Indigenous peoples across frontiers.

On each frontier, European settlers shed customs unfit for the wilderness and adopted “primitive” survival methods. Turner portrays the conditions as cultivating traits like ingenuity, coarseness, restlessness, and inventiveness in Americans. Turner argues that continually reinventing civilization on these frontiers allowed the fundamentally American spirit of restless reinvention to flourish. Settlers left refined Europe behind to carve cabins from the rough wilderness, reverting to what Turner considers to be “primitive” conditions. They frequently followed the pre-existing Indigenous trails and transportation routes, often adopting Indigenous methods for traversing the harsh landscape and procuring food. Turner argues that the apparent availability of abundant western land—“free” to be taken in the perception of European settlers—promoted a sense of egalitarianism, unlike the land control of Europe’s aristocracy. Distance from eastern power centers cultivated rugged individualism and self-reliance. Turner attributes the national spirit of innovation and invention to frontier conditions demanding resourcefulness and improvisation to survive. Frontier priorities like expansion and access shaped early state constitutions as settlers carried this ethos into governance. Adapting legal and political institutions to accommodate frontier priorities strengthened participatory democracy and loosened social hierarchies nationwide.

However, the cultivated East feared the uncontrolled frontier West, which threatened established power and social order with its improvisational ethos. Turner portrays the East as timid and ineffective compared to the daring, rebellious frontiersman. The Eastern elite tried to curb settlement and limit political influence by restricting land sales and western expansion through measures like the Proclamation Line of 1763, but this was largely futile and only deepened sectional divides. Turner argues that accommodating frontier priorities fundamentally shaped national policies around land distribution, tariffs, and internal improvements in transportation and communication infrastructure. Federal projects like the Cumberland Road accommodated western needs for east-west routes to eastern markets. Frontier settlers flouted the Proclamation Line of 1763, which tried to restrict expansion past the Appalachians as the wild frontier spirit resisted control. Eventually, Eastern capital flowed west to fund railroads, canals, and other internal improvements as Western demands overruled them.

Turner concludes his essay with a summary of his organizing idea: that the frontier experience decisively shaped the American psyche, as energetic, innovative, self-reliant, and democratic yet uncivilized. Turner expresses optimism about whether this formative spirit would endure now that the contiguous frontier was officially closed according to the 1890 census. He grapples with how the American spirit described as restless, adventurous, and inventive could maintain its vibrancy and fluidity without the continual rebirth and regeneration provided by the frontier. Turner wonders if Americans would lose their ruggedness and revert to European ways without the wilderness to conquer. However, he concludes that the frontier has engraved itself too deeply into the national character through centuries of expansion to ever fully disappear. Even after its disappearance, Turner argues that the legacy of the frontier will indelibly persist in shaping American culture, politics, and economy.