The frontier of the trappers and explorers ended with the discoveries of gold and silver and the expansion of the borders of the United States all the way to the Pacific Coast. The frontier of the miner and the rancher ended with the building of the transcontinental railroad, which opened up the West to farmers. The frontier of the farmer ended when the entire West was more or less fenced in and dotted with settlements. The closing of the frontier was dramatically announced in 1890 by the director of the census, who reported that no longer could a line be drawn on the map showing the farthest point reached by settlements.
This booklet illustrates the various frontiers from the plains to the Pacific. The West has stimulated the American imagination as almost no other aspect of our history (the television fare on any average night proves this); hence the total literature on the subject is vast. We have selected a handful of interesting reports from the many available.
In editing the manuscripts in this booklet, we have followed the practice of modernizing punctuation, capitalization, and spelling only when necessary to make the selections clear. We have silently corrected misspelled words and typographical errors. Whenever possible we have used complete selections, but occasionally space limitations made necessary cuts in the original documents. Such cuts are indicated by spaced periods. In general, the selections appear as the authors wrote them.
Richard B. Morris James Woodress
The Land and the People
George Catlin’s “Buffalo Hunt on Snow Shoes,”
Frémont Crosses the Sierras
Col. John Frémont led several exploring expeditions into the Oregon Territory, mapped the Oregon Trail, and helped add California to the United States during the Mexican War. He later was one of California’s first United States Senators and the first presidential candidate of the Republican Party. In 1844 we find him at the head of an expedition exploring the Sierra Nevada Mountains. In the account that follows, Frémont describes crossing the snowy range in February, over what is now Carson Pass and descending along the approximate route of U. S. Highway 50 to Sacramento.