Secondary Source

“Although communication and transportation networks increasingly linked the West with the rest of the nation, no one could have foreseen the next quarter century’s phenomenal growth. . . .

By 1900, of course, the nation’s future had dramatically changed, and, as scholars now increasingly recognize, the West helped to ‘reconstruct’ America. With its expansive, extractive economies, its growing forms of federal authority, and the creation of single-party Republican territories and states, the West in many ways presaged the development of a modern American state and economy. Moreover, the mythology of the West solidified the ideological narrative of American history. With its presumptions of rugged individualism and freedom from concentrated political power, the West quickly became the most iconic and ‘imagined’ region of the United States.”

- Ned Blackhawk, Historian, “The Development of the West,” 2012