The Census Bureau in 1890 proclaimed the western frontier closed. Nevertheless, three years later Historian Frederick Jackson Turner from Wisconsin University gave his now famous "frontier thesis" at the American Historical Association. Frederick Turner ran with the "closing of the frontier" as an opportunity to show the influence it had on American life. Turner's essay emphasized that the promotion of individualistic democracy was a main effect of the frontier. Up to our own day, American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. The exist…
