Tore Olson

I don't know if there's a single originator who we can give credit or blame to for this, but the term starts to become frequently used by the 1870s and 1880s.

So it's in the very moment that so many Westerns are set.

fictional Westerns that this this concept is arising.

And I would I would probably give credit in part to Buffalo Bill Cody, William Cody, who is this paradoxical guy who's one week he's, you know, in Wyoming, you know, fighting native peoples or, you know, engaged in violent conflict.

And then the next week he's in New York on stage fighting.

performing about it to you know gleeful audiences were eager to swallow up this sort of western mythology so it is you know it this mythology is being created at the very moment that the history is actually taking place which is a very interesting paradox

Yeah, I mean, certainly there's outpost settlements.

I think Deadwood in the Dakota Territory, what's today South Dakota, is a sort of iconic place.

But really, they exist because there's big industries going on.

So for Deadwood, for example, there's gold mining that's drawing lots of people there.

Often it was ranching, agriculture, but large-scale ranching undertakings.

And I think what's absent in so many of the mythical representations of these sleepy frontier towns is

And particularly industrial capitalism, because so much of Western history is about Eastern power interests trying to flex their muscles and take control of landscapes and materials and people as well in this region.

And so much of the violence that defined the West in the late 19th century was actually violence about capitalism and violence about wealth.

And, you know, that doesn't show up in the John Wayne version of American Western history.

Tell me about a figure named Frederick Jackson Turner.

Yeah, well, I don't think there's any single individual who does more to popularize this sort of significance of the frontier as the sort of backbone of American history and also popularize this notion of the West as this thing that's closing, that's that's beginning to wane, that is, you know, being tamed and domesticated and civilized.

So Frederick Jackson Turner is a historian.

And usually historians, he's a history professor.

Usually they don't have vast impact on American culture in the same way that this guy does.