Introduction
In his 1893 publication, The Significance of the Frontier in American History, Frederick Jackson Turner famously asserted that the American frontier had closed due to the population’s continual shift westward. In this assertion, Turner may have been expecting a story of settlement similar to that of the East – densely populated areas with little uninhabited land. However, the story of settlement in the West after 1890 is different. It features infrequent pockets of dense populations in large urban areas such as Denver and San Francisco, surrounded by vast frontier. While small farmers and homesteaders had traditionally typified those who settled in the frontier, they decreasingly comprised the region’s settlers as the trend of urbanization increased (the 1920 census first recorded that more Americans lived in urban areas than rural areas). Those who did remain in frontier areas had a changing demographic composition and used the land for a variety of reasons: big ranches and farms, agribusiness, resource extraction, water projects, and federal land holdings. Additionally, the frontier region became less imbalanced regarding sex, with a more equal distribution of females and males. These changes occurred as urban areas grew and changed tremendously during the 20th century, offering greater economic opportunities and room for social mobility than frontier areas. This project will explore the demographics of the inhabitants of the American West during the years from 1900 to 2000. The dimensions of analysis I will explore are location (regarding migration and settlement), family (regarding size of families), industry, sex, metropolitan status, marital status, and race during the time period from 1900 to 2000. Trends in these areas are important to consider due to the central roles that the frontier and urbanization play in American history. While the American West did not take on the settlement pattern that Turner had suggested it would, it did experience large changes in demographic trends throughout the 20th century that shaped it into today’s West.