October 22, 2025 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, in the 36th episode of our Story of America series, Hillsdale College professor and author of Land of Hope, Bill McClay, explores one of the turning points in American history: the moment the American frontier finally closed. For generations, the pioneers of the Westward Expansion had defined what it meant to be American. They built homesteads, followed old trails west, and carried with them the restless belief known as Manifest Destiny. By the end of the nineteenth century, that era had vanished. The vast wilderness that once promised endless renewal was now parceled, fenced, and settled. McClay reflects on what was gained through western settlement—and what was lost.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American stories.
Up next the Story of Us the Story of America
series with Hillsdale College professor and author of Land of
Hope Bill McLay. In the eighteen eighties, America was a
changing nation. But what became of the Western frontier. Let's
get into this story. Take it away, Bill.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Then there was the story of the great mythic land
of opportunity and dreams. How had its legacy been impacted
by these great.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
New economic and social forces.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Surely this land of open spaces and great canyons and
wilderness was untouched and unscathed by all that was happening
to our cities. And most certainly, that ethos of the
West is the land of rugged individualism and personal freedom,
was still alive in Kicking, wasn't it. Though we like
(01:06):
to think of the American West in certain ways, the
space populated with cowboys riding the open range and steering
massive numbers of cows, thousands of numbers on cattle drives
to cow towns like Abilene and Fort Worth. Truth is
that those times were more myth and legend in fact,
lasting only a brief time, a couple of decades at
(01:28):
most between the end of the Civil War in the
eighteen eighties. As farmers and ranchers populated the West, they
needed to increasingly settle out their property lines, which soon
began crowding out the kind of open ranges needed for
those epic cattle drives.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Ironically, the heavy hand of the federal.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Government in the American West would play an enormous role.
The federal government owns nearly half of the land there,
making the West the region of America least free from
federal interference. This was true nowhere more than an America's
Indian policy. The most tragic victims of America's rentless push
(02:08):
to consolidation were America's Plain Indians, two hundred and fifty
thousand of them, who were constantly bombarded with federal interference
and intrusion on their lands. They did what anyone would
do under the circumstances, resisting and fighting as best they could,
but eventually they.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Would lose everything.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
When the Nez first Chief Joseph finally surrendered, he said
these words, about as tragic as any words uttered in
our nation's history. I will fight no more forever. I
will fight no more forever. Think about what Chief Joseph
(02:54):
was saying in that short and powerful sentence, he wasn't
just surrendering all future combat. He was surrendering an entire
way of life, and worst, he was turning that way
of life over the people who running America's Indian affairs
policy and all of its duplicitousness and incompetence. The policy
(03:15):
of Americanizing Indians was deeply misguided. These Indians, too, were
trapped by forces much larger than themselves. And despite all
of this, the image of the American West is a
land of opportunity and freedom, a land of hope, persisted
(03:36):
hardwired into the very idea of America itself, which may
be why when the eighteen ninety Census Bureau report was issued,
it created such a stir because the report noted, in
its customary bureaucratic speak, that the western part of America
had so many settled spaces that quote there can hardly
(03:59):
be said to be a frontier line anymore.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
As only bureaucrats could do.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
In such cold language, the Census Bureau had essentially told
America and the world that the age of the American
frontier was over, and that was an earth shattering proclamation
could America be America without that image, without that idea
of the frontier, the answer to these profound cultural and
(04:29):
identity questions could never be founded the Census Bureau or
any other government agency. Much more talented to take on
the desk was Frederick Jackson Turner, a young historian from Wisconsin,
which was then considered the West, who penned an essay
entitled The Significance of the Frontier in American History. This
(04:52):
would become one of the most influential works of American
cultural history ever produced.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Here are some exeris from this remark.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
The whole essay, up to our own day, American history
has to a large degree been the history of the
colonization of the Great West, the existence of an area
of freeland.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Its continuous recession, and the.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Advance of American settlement. Western explain American development. Behind the institutions,
behind constitutional forms and modifications, lie the vital forces that
call these organs into life and shape them to.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Meet changing conditions.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
American social development has continually been beginning.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Over again on the frontier.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion
westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the
simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces dominating American character.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Turn then address the very notion, the very.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Idea, of what constitutes the frontier.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
What is the frontier? It is not the European.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Frontier, a fortified boundary line running through dense populations. The
most significant thing about it.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Is that it lies at the.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Hither edge of freeland. The term is an elastic one.
The frontier is the line of most rapid and effective americanization.
The wilderness masters the colonist. It finds him a European
in dress, industries, tools, modes of travel, and thought. It
takes him from the railroad car and puts him in
the birch canoe. It strips off the garments of civilization,
(06:40):
and it raised.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
Him in the hunting shirt and the moccasin.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
It puts him in the log cabin of the Cherokee
and Iroquois. Before long he's gone to planting Indian corn
and plowing with a sharp stick. He shouts the war
cry and takes the scalp in orthodox Indian fashion. In short,
at the frontier, the environment is at first too strong
for the man. He must accept the conditions which it
(07:06):
furnishes or perish. So he fits himself into the Indian
clearings and follows the Indian trails. Little by little he
transforms the wilderness. But the outcome is not the old Europe.
The fact is that here is a new product that
(07:29):
is American. At first, the frontier was the Atlantic coast.
It was the frontier of Europe in a very real sense.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Moving westward, the frontier became more and more American.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
A successive terminal moraines result from successive glaciations.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Here he's using geology as his metaphor.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
So each frontier leaves its traces behind it, and when
it becomes a settled area, the region still partakes of
the frontier characteristic.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
That's the advance.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
The frontier has met, a steady movement away from the
influence of Europe, a steady growth of independence on American lines.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
And to study this advance the men who.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Grew up under these conditions, is to study the really
American part of our history. Here Turner captures the very
force of nature that the idea of the frontier inspires.
Turner continues, it appears, then that the universal disposition of
(08:30):
Americans to emigrate to the western wilderness in order to
enlarge their dominion over inanimate nature. Since the days when
the fleet of Columbus sailed into the waters of the
New World, America has been another name for opportunity, and
the people of the United States have taken their tone
from the incessant expansion which has not only been open,
(08:51):
but has.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Even been forced upon them.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
He would be a rash prophet who should assert that
the expansive character of American life has now entirely ceased.
Movement has been its dominant fact, and unless this training
has no effect upon a people, the American energy will
continually demand a wider field for its exercise. But never
(09:14):
again will such gifts of free land offer themselves what
the Mediterranean see was to the Greeks, breaking the bond
of custom, offering new experiences that and more. The ever
retreating frontier has been to the United States directory and now,
four centuries from the discovery of America, at the end
(09:36):
of one hundred years of life under the Constitution, the
frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the
first period of American history.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Thus ends Turner.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
But what would be come of America now that the
frontier as we knew it was over. Were there new
frontiers to be had, Frontiers of the imagination, frontiers in creativity,
frontiers in space?
Speaker 3 (10:11):
And there were more questions.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Did America's future now belong to the organized and centralized
and nationalized and to the massive forces at play that
marched to the tune of modern industrial life? Those were
the big and unanswered questions as a new era emerged
as an era of industrialization and urbanization. Would alter American
(10:34):
life as we knew it, But would it alter it totally?
That remained to be seen.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
The Story of America series, This one the fate of
the American Frontier. Here on our American Stories
This is Lee Habib and this is our American stories.
Up next the Story of Us the Story of America
series with Hillsdale College professor and author of Land of
Hope Bill McLay. In the eighteen eighties, America was a
changing nation. But what became of the Western frontier. Let's
get into this story. Take it away, Bill.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Then there was the story of the great mythic land
of opportunity and dreams. How had its legacy been impacted
by these great.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
New economic and social forces.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Surely this land of open spaces and great canyons and
wilderness was untouched and unscathed by all that was happening
to our cities. And most certainly, that ethos of the
West is the land of rugged individualism and personal freedom,
was still alive in Kicking, wasn't it. Though we like
(01:06):
to think of the American West in certain ways, the
space populated with cowboys riding the open range and steering
massive numbers of cows, thousands of numbers on cattle drives
to cow towns like Abilene and Fort Worth. Truth is
that those times were more myth and legend in fact,
lasting only a brief time, a couple of decades at
(01:28):
most between the end of the Civil War in the
eighteen eighties. As farmers and ranchers populated the West, they
needed to increasingly settle out their property lines, which soon
began crowding out the kind of open ranges needed for
those epic cattle drives.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Ironically, the heavy hand of the federal.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Government in the American West would play an enormous role.
The federal government owns nearly half of the land there,
making the West the region of America least free from
federal interference. This was true nowhere more than an America's
Indian policy. The most tragic victims of America's rentless push
(02:08):
to consolidation were America's Plain Indians, two hundred and fifty
thousand of them, who were constantly bombarded with federal interference
and intrusion on their lands. They did what anyone would
do under the circumstances, resisting and fighting as best they could,
but eventually they.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Would lose everything.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
When the Nez first Chief Joseph finally surrendered, he said
these words, about as tragic as any words uttered in
our nation's history. I will fight no more forever. I
will fight no more forever. Think about what Chief Joseph
(02:54):
was saying in that short and powerful sentence, he wasn't
just surrendering all future combat. He was surrendering an entire
way of life, and worst, he was turning that way
of life over the people who running America's Indian affairs
policy and all of its duplicitousness and incompetence. The policy
(03:15):
of Americanizing Indians was deeply misguided. These Indians, too, were
trapped by forces much larger than themselves. And despite all
of this, the image of the American West is a
land of opportunity and freedom, a land of hope, persisted
(03:36):
hardwired into the very idea of America itself, which may
be why when the eighteen ninety Census Bureau report was issued,
it created such a stir because the report noted, in
its customary bureaucratic speak, that the western part of America
had so many settled spaces that quote there can hardly
(03:59):
be said to be a frontier line anymore.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
As only bureaucrats could do.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
In such cold language, the Census Bureau had essentially told
America and the world that the age of the American
frontier was over, and that was an earth shattering proclamation
could America be America without that image, without that idea
of the frontier, the answer to these profound cultural and
(04:29):
identity questions could never be founded the Census Bureau or
any other government agency. Much more talented to take on
the desk was Frederick Jackson Turner, a young historian from Wisconsin,
which was then considered the West, who penned an essay
entitled The Significance of the Frontier in American History. This
(04:52):
would become one of the most influential works of American
cultural history ever produced.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Here are some exeris from this remark.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
The whole essay, up to our own day, American history
has to a large degree been the history of the
colonization of the Great West, the existence of an area
of freeland.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Its continuous recession, and the.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Advance of American settlement. Western explain American development. Behind the institutions,
behind constitutional forms and modifications, lie the vital forces that
call these organs into life and shape them to.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Meet changing conditions.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
American social development has continually been beginning.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Over again on the frontier.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion
westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the
simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces dominating American character.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Turn then address the very notion, the very.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Idea, of what constitutes the frontier.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
What is the frontier? It is not the European.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Frontier, a fortified boundary line running through dense populations. The
most significant thing about it.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Is that it lies at the.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Hither edge of freeland. The term is an elastic one.
The frontier is the line of most rapid and effective americanization.
The wilderness masters the colonist. It finds him a European
in dress, industries, tools, modes of travel, and thought. It
takes him from the railroad car and puts him in
the birch canoe. It strips off the garments of civilization,
(06:40):
and it raised.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
Him in the hunting shirt and the moccasin.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
It puts him in the log cabin of the Cherokee
and Iroquois. Before long he's gone to planting Indian corn
and plowing with a sharp stick. He shouts the war
cry and takes the scalp in orthodox Indian fashion. In short,
at the frontier, the environment is at first too strong
for the man. He must accept the conditions which it
(07:06):
furnishes or perish. So he fits himself into the Indian
clearings and follows the Indian trails. Little by little he
transforms the wilderness. But the outcome is not the old Europe.
The fact is that here is a new product that
(07:29):
is American. At first, the frontier was the Atlantic coast.
It was the frontier of Europe in a very real sense.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Moving westward, the frontier became more and more American.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
A successive terminal moraines result from successive glaciations.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Here he's using geology as his metaphor.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
So each frontier leaves its traces behind it, and when
it becomes a settled area, the region still partakes of
the frontier characteristic.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
That's the advance.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
The frontier has met, a steady movement away from the
influence of Europe, a steady growth of independence on American lines.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
And to study this advance the men who.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Grew up under these conditions, is to study the really
American part of our history. Here Turner captures the very
force of nature that the idea of the frontier inspires.
Turner continues, it appears, then that the universal disposition of
(08:30):
Americans to emigrate to the western wilderness in order to
enlarge their dominion over inanimate nature. Since the days when
the fleet of Columbus sailed into the waters of the
New World, America has been another name for opportunity, and
the people of the United States have taken their tone
from the incessant expansion which has not only been open,
(08:51):
but has.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Even been forced upon them.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
He would be a rash prophet who should assert that
the expansive character of American life has now entirely ceased.
Movement has been its dominant fact, and unless this training
has no effect upon a people, the American energy will
continually demand a wider field for its exercise. But never
(09:14):
again will such gifts of free land offer themselves what
the Mediterranean see was to the Greeks, breaking the bond
of custom, offering new experiences that and more. The ever
retreating frontier has been to the United States directory and now,
four centuries from the discovery of America, at the end
(09:36):
of one hundred years of life under the Constitution, the
frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the
first period of American history.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Thus ends Turner.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
But what would be come of America now that the
frontier as we knew it was over. Were there new
frontiers to be had, Frontiers of the imagination, frontiers in creativity,
frontiers in space?
Speaker 3 (10:11):
And there were more questions.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Did America's future now belong to the organized and centralized
and nationalized and to the massive forces at play that
marched to the tune of modern industrial life? Those were
the big and unanswered questions as a new era emerged
as an era of industrialization and urbanization. Would alter American
(10:34):
life as we knew it, But would it alter it totally?
That remained to be seen.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
The Story of America series, This one the fate of
the American Frontier. Here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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