Essay

Where Is the American West? Report on a Survey Author(s): Walter Nugent Source: Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 42, No. 3 (Summer, 1992), pp. 2- 23 Published by: Montana Historical Society Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4519496 Accessed: 08-01-2019 14:01 UTC

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Where is the American West?

Report on a Survey

by Walter Nugent

Disagreements about how to define 'West" and "frontier" and how to distinguish the two terms are nothing new to historians of both. The

urgency of these problems has ebbed and flowed. Lately it has flooded like a spring torrent, fed by the assertions of some "new western

historians" that the West is a place, not a Turnerian process. Before the day is done, the torrent may further swell by the melting snowpack from "old western historians" who think that process remains very

much part of the story.

But new western historians have raised the place-versus-process issue, and hence, questioned anew the definition of "the West." They have stated their premises clearly in several recent publications.' Among

these premises (though not every new western historian agrees on all of them) are these: that western history hardly stopped in 1890 or 1893

or any other year; that it has been marked less by "progress" than by "conquest" and conflict; that the West is a place where this conquest has taken place, a definite place on the map, rather than the process

that Frederick Jackson Turner stated was essential to the frontier idea. As Patricia Nelson Limerick wrote in Legacy of Conquest, "De-emphasize

the frontier and its supposed end, conceive of the West as a place and not a process, and Western American history has a new look."2 Richard

White, in his massive new history of the western region, avoids the term "frontier." In the set of essays edited by William Cronon, George

Miles, and Jay Gitlin, Limerick explains that

To Frederick Jackson Turner and his followers in conventional western history, the frontier (and, by extension, the West) was a process, not a place; a concept,

not an actual geographical location. In this way of thinking, the West is wherever the American mind puts it-a pretty vague and ephemeral target

for "image" analysis.3

It seemed to me, since the new western history continued to gain attention and generate controversy, that it would be interesting

and useful to know how widely the "place" versus "process" antinomy operates in people's minds, and where people believe the true West to

be. That question leads, of course, to what the West signifies. Since the frontier idea, as William Goetzmann and others have said, has been our great American creation myth, the question touches not just on images

of the West but on conceptions of the whole of America.

Photographs illustrating this article are from 'aMontana Reflections: Contemporary Photographs-

Historic VZisions," an exhibit at the Montana Historical Society from December 1990-April 1992.

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Montana The Magazine of Western History Summer 1992

ut does notthe question of "where" the West is, also suggest "when" the West was? And this suggests yet another ques-

tion-do frontiers end, do regions come and go, and if so how can we tell? That last question must wait for another occasion. It is enough for now to inquire of people seriously interested in the West, from different perspectives, how they feel about the place-versus-process argument. I have also been curious, long before the new western history appeared, in the simple question of where other people began to sense westernness as they trav- eled from east to west across the country (or where they no longer felt "western" if they were leaving the region). The answers should help define regionalism.

What interested parties think about place-ver- sus-process and where one starts or stops feeling "western" are questions resolvable by a survey. Therefore, in the spring of 1991, I designed and mailed out nearly five hundred questionnaires to members of the Western History Association, a list of editors and publishers of newspapers and magazines from Colorado to California, and mem- bers of the Western Writers of America. The re-

sponse was remarkable for size, vehemence, and content. The results appear below.

The Questions The questionnaire consisted of three short ques-

tions: (1) "How would you describe the bound- aries of 'the West' (on the east, south, north, and west)?"; (2) "Where are you now (i.e. in what section of the country), and where would you have to go to get to the edge of the West?"; (3) 'WVhat characteristics set apart the West, as you have defined it, from other regions?" Each person also received a personal data form so that answers could be linked to age, sex, place of residence, and occupation.4 The three questions are increasingly open-ended. The first asks for a specific geographic response; the second for a more personal but still presumably geographic response; while the third is almost completely open, and to it many people gave several answers-Wests of geography, cli- mate, myth, history, imagination, and more.

The cover letter explained that various people have defined the West differently. Bernard DeVoto and Joan Didion said it starts where rainfall drops

1. Outstanding examples are Patricia Nelson Limerick, TheLegacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987); Patricia Nelson Limerick, Clyde A Milner II, and Charles E. Rankin, Trails: Toward a New Western History (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991); Richard White, 'It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own': A New History of the American West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991); and William Cronon, George Miles, and Jay Gitlin, eds., Under an Open Sky: Rethinking America's Western Past (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992).

below twenty inches a year. But that excludes San Francisco and the coast north of it. An "eminent historian of the West who lives in New England" felt "western," so he once told me, when he crossed Indiana. The columnist Richard Reeves said he "got the notion that Chillicothe, Ohio, was where the West really began."

On the back of the data sheet was a map, and it contained one of the two major biases in the questionnaire-both unavoidable but also not without malice aforethought. The map was of the continental United States, with insets of Hawaii, Alaska, and Puerto Rico. State boundaries were indicated but rivers and other natural features were not, nor were Canada or Mexico. The map was therefore skewed toward a political response and against including Canada or Mexico. My al- ternative was to provide a map of North America, but that, I thought, would have introduced an even stronger bias toward including Canada and Mexico. Secondly, the very presence of a map invited re- sponses that were geographical and also presentist. It discouraged responses that located or defined the West as it may have been at any past time, or as it may now exist in people's minds.

Despite these biases, many respondents in- sisted on including Canada and/or Mexico; many insisted that the 'West" must be defined not only by "where," but also by "when"; and many pro- nounced it not a geographical entity at all, but a cultural one. Many insisted, explicitly, on the West as process rather than just as place. One respon- dent, in a personal letter, upbraided me for the questionnaire's "refusal to situate itself in time," but concluded, "My suspicion is that you probably share a number of the reservations [about defin- ing the West exclusively as place] I've expressed ... [and] your strategy in framing the questions as you have is no doubt cleverer and sneakier than I've realized." True. Also, given the geographic and presentist bias of the questionnaire, we can assume that historical and cultural definitions are even stronger in the respondents' minds than the numerical results indicate.

The Questionnaire

The questionnaire went to three groups of people. The first and largest was a roughly one- fifth sample, basically random, of the members of the Western History Association (WHA)-307

2. Limerick, Legacy of Conquest, 26-27. 3. Patricia Nelson Limerick, "Making the Most of Words: Verbal

Activity and Western America," in Cronon, Miles, and Gitlin, eds., Under an Open Sky: Rethinking America's Western Past, 167.

4. Rodney Geaney and Dorothy East of the Social Science Train- ing Laboratory in the University of Notre Dame counseled me on survey design and carried out mailing and tabulation of data sheets.

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people.5 The second was a group of 97 editors and publishers ranging from metropolitan dailies to special-interest magazines.6 The third was a roughly one-fifth sample, 76 people, of the West- ern Writers of America (WWA). These 480 ques- tionnaires were mailed in March and April 1991.

The Responses

By the end of June we received 251 responses: 188 from WHA members (61 percent); 25 from journalists (26 percent); and 38 from WWA mem- bers (50 percent).7 The WHA response was espe- cially gratifying. Reading them was like arriving at a WHA meeting on an October Thursday and actually having time to talk with almost two hun- dred friends and colleagues about an ostensibly casual but really quite complex question.8 Clearly the great majority of respondents regard these as serious questions.9The respondents had lived, on average, nineteen years in their state of present residence, and divided about equally among large, medium, and small cities, and rural places.10 The WWApeople were more reclusive- fully a quarter of them live on farms, ranches, and in villages, compared to only 4 percent of historians and none

5. Early in 1990 I obtained the WHA mailing list, which consisted of connected strips of mailing labels arranged by zip codes, beginning with Maine and ending with Alaska. On each strip were a dozen names. Ignoring institutional members I chose two or three names from each strip. This method seemed to assure randomness about as well as any other.

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of the journalists. Two-thirds were between thirty and sixty years old, most of the rest were over sixty, and only 2 percent were under thirty. Of the WWA group, 43 percent were female compared to 19 percent of the WHA group and 20 percent of the journalists. Only 8 percent of the WHA and WWA respondents-but 21 percent of the journalists!- asked not to be quoted.

The personal data sheets were not dry profiles. To the question, "how long have you lived in your present state of residence" and how long else- where, Michael Harrison answered, "57 years in California (present), plus 10 in Arizona, 3 in New Mexico, and 25 in New Jersey; total 95." A WWA member from Buena Vista, Colorado, replied that "I've lived here as a child, student, teacher, wife, widow, mother, journalist, writer, camper, rockhound;" and another, from Santa Fe, wrote, "I write under a man's name. Please don't use my real name. Ladies don't sell westerns." One WWA member, Lauran Paine of Siskiyou County, Cali- fornia, wrote,

I have worked and lived in most Far Western and

Southwestern states. Cattle ranching, wild horse

6. Thejournalists' names are from a standard 1986 referencework giving names, addresses, circulation, and other data about newspapers and magazines. The age of the issue seriously reduced the journalists' responses-my fault and not theirs.

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Responses to question 1 ("How would you describe the boundaries of the West?")

Who responded? WHA Press WWA Total

Total, each group 187 25 39 251 Gave non-geographical response 23 1 16 40 Geographical responses 164 24 23 211

Place the Eastern boundary at: Mississippi River 36 2 7 45

Red-Missouri-Sabine Rrs. 40 8 6 54

Same, but exclude east 7 0 2 9 Texas or other small area

98th meridian 27 2 1 30 100th meridian 24 1 2 27

Eastern borders of MT-NM 4 6 0 10

Rockies (east face) 5 5 1 11

Other (often includes Old 15 0 0 15 Northwest, or "between" Miss. & Mo., 98th & 100th)

Unclear 6 0 4 10 Blank 0 0 0 0

Northern boundary: Border, 49th parallel 57 13 6 76

Include parts of Canada 54 1 6 61 Arctic Circle or Ocean 8 0 1 9

Other 1 0 0 1 Unclear 6 1 4 11 Blank 38 9 6 53

Include Alaska? (at northern or western boundary) Yes 52 2 4 58 No 10 0 2 12

Include Hawaii?

Yes 20 1 2 23 No 22 0 2 24

Southern boundary: Border or "Gulf 75 11 7 93

Include parts of Mexico 40 2 6 48

Other 1 1 0 2 Unclear 6 1 4 11 Blank 42 9 6 57

Western boundary: Pacific Ocean 97 10 6 113

Pacific, with exclusions 12 1 3 16 (Exclude large cities: 3 0 1 4) southern Calif. 0 0 1 1) all of Calif. 3 1 0 4) Pacific N.W. 3 0 0 3) "coastal strip" 3 0 1 4)

Cascades-Sierras 9 3 5 17

Exclude Calif.- Ore.-Wash. 4 0 0 4

Other 3 1 0 4 Unclear 6 1 4 11 Blank 33 8 5 46

trapping, blacksmithing, even sank so low as to become a motion picture rider, and upon discov- ering that none of these vocations would provide the income I aspired to ... I began writing. Total published books to date 912 of which 714 West- erns have been for one publisher.

But now for the meat and potatoes. Where do these people think the West is, and why?

Question 1: Where are the West's Boundaries?

The answers may be summed up in these ten points:

1. Respondents focused much more on the eastern boundary than the other three. Everyone made a choice, and only about 5 percent were unclear (10/211). Regarding the western bound- ary, again only 5 percent were unclear, but 22 percent gave no response.

2. Respondents were much more indecisive, or just inattentive, about the northern and southern boundaries. Many probably took the Canadian and Mexican borders for granted. In both cases 5 percent answered unclearly; and 25 percent sim- ply did not state a northern boundary and 27 percent did not state a southern one. Differences were not great among the three groups (WHA, journalists, WWA).

3. A number of people identified only an east- ern boundary, perhaps having mentally exhausted themselves in so doing. And a few who were reluctant to set any geographical boundaries said, well, if you insist, I'd place the eastern one at X or Y, then left it at that.

4. About one out of 6 (40/251 = 15.9%) refused to name any geographical boundaries. Instead they said the West is a "state of mind," an "idea," "myth," or "mental construct," or something simi- lar. Of the three groups, about one-eighth of the WHA members took this position (23/187 = 12.3%), only one of the editors did so (1/25 = 4%), but nearly half of the western writers (16/39 = 41%). The writers, or many of them, believe the West is myth, and they write about and perpetuate the myth.

7. This response rate, especially the WHA response, is unusually high. In any survey some mailings are undeliverable.

8. Of the WHA group, replies came from 68 percent of 230 males, and 41 percent of 75 females, who were sent questionnaires. I cannot explain the gender difference, which carried through every occupa- tional and geographic subgroup. Occupationally, two-thirds were col- lege and university faculty, and the rest were public historians, writers, and "buffs." Closely reflecting geographic distribution of WHA mem- bership, 58 questionnaires went to Californians, 22 to Texans, 21 to Coloradans, and the rest to people in all but four states. People who belong to both WHA and WWA received two questionnaires.

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Montana The Magazine of Western History Summer 1992

Many of them are genre writers and adamantly oppose the whole idea of demythologizing. Many in this group also reject the idea that the West is a contemporary, twentieth-century matter. I can think of other fiction writers who would scarcely agree-Ivan Doig and Tom King, for example, whose material is twentieth century. But the West- ern Writers of America largely work with material from, or redolent of, the past. Their livelihood depends on the myths. It's not that they are nec- essarily more romantic about the West (though some are deeply attached to it) but that they write and sell what is romantic to many readers.

5. Regarding the eastern boundary, geographi- cal responses were as follows. WHA members chose the Mississippi River in 22 percent of the cases, sometimes reluctantly but because that is where many begin the courses they teach. The largest group, 29 percent, picked the north-south line of the Red, Missouri, and Sabine rivers. But combining the 16.5 percent who chose the 98th meridian and the 15 percent who chose the 100th, fully 31 percent locate it at the eastern edge of the Great Plains, often with a verbal bow to Walter Prescott Webb. Only 5 percent chose the Rockies or close by, with 13 percent giving unclear or other responses, from the Atlantic Coast to eastern Idaho.

The editors, all from Colorado to California, opted strongly-46 percent-for the Rockies or the eastern borders of states in the front range of the Rockies (Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico), with only 8 percent choosing the Missis- sippi River.

The writers-the slight majority who gave geographical responses-stuck to the traditional Mississippi River or Missouri River two-thirds of the time (65 percent).

6. Regarding the western boundary, most of the historians and journalists clearly opted for the Pacific Coast, but a minority of about one in six excluded all or parts of California, Oregon, and Washington. The writers were again more tradi- tional; 40 percent of them excluded all or parts of the coastal states, and several refused to include any large cities, or what one called "plastic places" such as Vail, Aspen, and Las Vegas.

The exclusion of the coastal states, coastal strip, or cities, is a minority view but a significant one. Interestingly, most of those who hold it do not live in those areas. People who do live there, quite

9. The survey responses may be of use to students of regionalism; this report does not exhaust their contents. I hope to deposit them at a later time in an accessible place, probably the Huntington Library.

10. By "large" cities I mean here 500,000 and up; "medium" mean- ing 100,000 to 500,000; "small" meaning under 100,000; "rural" meaning anywhere under 25,000.

definitely those who live in Los Angeles, regard themselves as being not only in the West but in the center of the West.

7. As to whether Alaska and Hawaii are west-

ern: both appeared on the map circulated with the questionnaire, so it was hard to ignore them. Yet many did. Of the 70 (27.8 percent) who did refer to Alaska, 83 percent think it is indeed part of the West, wherever else they place the western or northern boundaries of the region. Of the 47 (18.7 percent) referring to Hawaii, the split was close- 49 percent including it, 51 percent saying it is not western. The divisions on Alaska and Hawaii were

nearly the same among all three respondent groups, except that the writers (WWA) were less inclined than the historians (WHA) to include Alaska.

8. Regarding the northern boundary, many took it for granted. The map I provided showed the United States only, so a respondent had to go slightly against the grain to include Canada. But many did. More historians (62) said; "include some parts of it," than said, "stop at the border" (57). The writers split about evenly. The journal- ists strongly (13 to 1) preferred to use the United States border than to include any part of Canada. Had I circulated a map of North America rather than of the United States, I suspect more would have included Canada. The tilt of the historians

may indicate-so their comments often suggest- that, influenced by Webb, James Malin, and per- haps Turner, they think more in terms of environ- ment and physiography than the other groups do, and more in terms of prairie settlement patterns than they think of political boundaries.

9. The southern boundary brought more non- responses than the other three. Many probably take the Rio Grande and the line across the Sonoran

desert as a given. Some of the historians, espe- cially those living in Arizona or New Mexico or who specialize in borderlands history, pointed out that the border arbitrarily divides people and geography that are better thought of as a unit. Thus 24 percent of the historians, 26 percent of the writers, and only 8 percent of the editors consider parts of northern Mexico as being in the West.

10. A consensus? Not quite. On the east, about half see the West as beginning at the Mississippi River or Missouri River, the other half at the eastern edge of the Great Plains or in a few cases the Rockies' front range. On the west, most stop at the Pacific Ocean but a sizeable minority say, leave out the coast and its cities. On the north,

11. See the next piece for her full quotable quote. 12. One specificallynamed the Dallas-FortWorth airport, butfailed

to state which concourse.

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Walter Nugent

historians divide, slightly in favor of including western Canada, the rest stopping at the border. On the south, most of those saying anything at all stop at the border, though a goodly minority of historians would include parts of northern Mexico, especially the desert. But, to repeat, fully one- sixth (and nearly half of the writers) refused to identify any geographical boundaries at all, and many others stated them under protest. These people remain convinced that 'West" and "fron- tier" are not that separable, and that process re- mains more important than present place.

Question 2: Where do you have to go to get to the West?

Replies to this question were not always consis- tent with replies to question 1. Here, respondents often placed the eastern edge farther west. Many seem to have answered #1 mindful of how they teach, but #2 in more personal terms. For ex- ample, the same person might say "Mississippi River" to #1, but "Grand Island, Nebraska" to #2.

Unanimously, everyone east of the plains states, when asked about the edge, identified an eastern edge. So did most of the Texans, but two of them and one Kansan referred only to a western edge (the Pacific). The farther west the respondent's residence, the more often she or he mentioned the Pacific or some other western border, rather than an eastern border. A few in the Southwest, assum- ing they should choose the closest edge, men- tioned "somewhere in Mexico" or, specifically, Nogales (either Arizona or Sonora).

A few non-Californians put the edge at the California-Nevada line-that is, west of that is no longer "the West," but only 4 of the 37 Californians (WHA) did so. The other 33 Californians in the WHA group regarded themselves as inside the West; 8 expressly said, "I'm at the edge of the West." Thus, although some (especially among the writers) wanted California declared outside the region, the Californians nearly all dealt them- selves in. One wrote that, being in Los Angeles, she was at the edge and the center simultaneously.

Everybody in the WHA living east of the Mis- souri River regard themselves as outside the West. (This is despite the fact that 34 respondents, from all over, placed the eastern edge at the Mis- sissippi, not the Missouri; but nobody actually living between the Mississippi and Missouri riv-

13. I have lived in Topeka and would not call it western, but I would certainly agree with four respondents who find themselves in the West when they drive about forty miles west of Topeka into the Flint Hills of Kansas. But some would say the Flint Hills are only a preview. After them, going west, one has to pass through the corn and wheat fields from Abilene to near Hays before finding "the West" again.

ers-in Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana-claimed to be within the West. On the other hand, respondents from Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and everywhere farther west said they were inside, except one Texan and six Californians.

The states whose respondents split over whether their state was part of the West-and most of them said the boundary was somewhere within their own state-were Kansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota. The Kansans split, five think- ing themselves inside, two outside, with three ambiguous. The "outsiders" live in Lawrence and Topeka and said the edge was at Dodge City, or west of Salina and Wichita; two said they were half in, half out (Emporia and the Flint Hills); six said they were inside (they live in Lawrence, Topeka, Manhattan, Wichita, and Dodge City) and would have to go to the Pacific, to Ohio, to St. Louis, or to Micronesia to get to the edge. The respondent from Dodge City, Betty Braddock, who manages a cultural resource center there, wrote that the edge of the West is "In Dodge City-on the 100th meridian.""l

As for the ten Nebraskans and South Dakotans, all but one placed the edge somewhere within their states. Two wrote "I'm there"; they live in Lincoln. Another Lincolnian said he was right on the edge. Two others (from Lincoln or Omaha) said the edge was 90 or 100 miles west of Omaha; one named Grand Island, another North Platte. The two South Dakotans both named the 100th meridian; one lives on it, the other a bit east and hence declared himself outside. The sole North Dakotan also named the 100th meridian. So, as identified by those closest to it and most conscious of it, the eastern edge of the West consists of the eastern borders of Texas and Oklahoma, and it either continues straight north along the Missouri and Red rivers or jumps somewhere to a north- south line through the middle of Kansas, Ne- braska, and the Dakotas.

The replies to question 2 were more personal, less cerebral, less insistent that the West cannot be identified geographically. Thus, question 2 (rather unintentionally-I sought primarily a per- sonal feeling of when one gets there or gets out of it) served as a validity check on question 1.

A few places received several mentions. St. Louis was often claimed to be the western edge, East St. Louis as just outside; others drew lines between Kansas City, Missouri, and Kansas City, Kansas; Omaha and Council Bluffs; and Dallas and Fort Worth (five respondents) in the same way.12 Kearney and North Platte, Nebraska, and

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Montana The Magazine of Western History Summer 1992

Topeka, Kansas, each got two votes."3 Five chose Grand Island, Nebraska, and five others Fort Smith, Arkansas.

The more imperialistic (or cosmopolitan) re- spondents placed the western and northern edges (one vote each) at Kamchatka, Attu Island, Japan, Micronesia, the North Pole, or the Arctic Ocean. The farthest eastward placement of the eastern boundary was western New England.

Does residence or previous experience have lnuch to do with where people put the boundaries? Initially I suspected so but it seems to have mini- mal influence except in a couple of ways. I had expected that people in, say, New York would say Chicago is West (as people did when I was a child in northern New York) and that people on the plains would consider Chicago and Indiana as East (as my wife's graduate-school roommate, a

South Dakotan, did). But not many did so. It is true that eastern people picked the Mississippi River or St. Louis more often than did people living in the middle of the country (in Kansas, for example), but so did Californians, looking from the other direction. Haziness about distant geog- raphy played some role-Californians were happy with any place from the Missouri River to Ohio, while some easterners think that not much sepa- rates the Rockies from the Sierras or the Pacific. That aside, there were few differences that seem based solely on residential experience.

Question 3: What are the West's Characteristics?

This was the most open-ended of the three ques- tions. Question 1 directed the reply toward four

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Walter Nugent

compass directions; question 2 asked for specific locations on the "edge" of the West. But question 3 did not limit responses. The result was that many people gave more than one defining char- acteristic.'4 They fall into two broad categories: geographical definitions such as aridity, scenery, open space, lack of population density, or environ- ment; and cultural definitions such as openness, friendliness, or other attitudes; a common and recent frontier history; or that the West is a myth or state of mind. Clearly, here as in the replies to the other two questions, historians were more geographically minded; editors and, above all, writers more culturally minded. While 61 percent of the WHA group mentioned cultural definitions, virtually all of the writers did so. The historians often said that a definition of the West depends on when one is talking about-the term means

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nothing without a time frame. The writers often said that the West exists in the past, and in the mind; very few of them seem to think that there is such a thing as a twentieth-century West, while few historians would now wish to conclude west-

ern history at 1890 or 1920. Again the separation of historians (seeking verifiable truths) from the writers (seeking to explain, extol, and extend the myth) is very sharp.

Besides the geographical and cultural defini- tions, a few others appeared. Thirty historians (but only two editors and two writers) found the West distinctive as the place of greatest ethnic and racial mixing, the most varied multicultural re- gion. Seventeen historians (but no editors or writers) found the presence of Indians a distin- guishing feature. Twenty-eight historians (only two editors and two writers) noted the unusually extraction-oriented economy, and fourteen cited environmental attitudes and practices (reckless or careful) as western traits. Four historians be- lieve the West is distinctive because slavery never flourished there. Nine historians said that the

West cannot be defined; they see no distinguish- ing features that are not so riddled by exceptions as to make the regional concept useless.

These responses are so rich and nuanced that I would be editorializing if I attempted to summa- rize them further. Look instead at the next article, where many of them appear verbatim.

A few replies could not easily be categorized. The West is defined, said one historian, by its lack of a distinct accent; another said it keeps shrink- ing; another said it is defined only by simple latitude and longitude; another by the use of six- and eight-man high school football teams. Among the writers, one said westerners are distinct be- cause they do have a distinct accent; another cited "reading habits" (but didn't say what they are). One of the editors said the West simply has "fewer asses."

It seems clear that the idea of the West solely as place-where it now is-has some way to go. The majority of WHA members, and larger propor- tions of western fiction writers and the editors and

publishers of newspapers and magazines in the West, do not agree-not yet, anyway-that the West is limited to the present western half of the country, or that "frontier" is a dirty word, or that history began in 1850. The "new" and "old" west- ern histories each claim many adherents. To judge by the results of this survey, they will be arguing the place-versus-process question for a long time.

14. On average, regardless of group (WHA, journalists, WWA), each respondent gave just under two definitions-some giving only one, others several.

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ans, and by now he is relevant to yet another.3 While he won't condescend to say it Hofstadter implies that it is in defining West as process Turner continually reflects the West's essential tie on the American mind and its past.

Some respondents believed that there was no way to define the West, at least usefully. Paul Prucha of Marquette University wrote that he disliked surveys and enclosed an 1841 extract from George Catlin "to illustrate the point that the West wasn't a static thing, a definite limited local- ity or section." Adds T. A Larson of Iaramie, Wyoming:

Thirty years ago I thought of the West as the area lying west of the 100th meridian in the con- tiguous states of the United States. Now I find the term athe West" as too vague and unsatisfactory . . . athe West" is a congeries of "sub-regions" that have more differences than similarities. They do not lend themselves to satisfactory treatment as one region or section.

And Alfred Runte of Seattle adds: I wouldn't [set boundaries]. The West is a

sense" of westering, wherever a gfeeling" of the westward movement is strong and evocative. I "feel" that I am in the West at Pittsburgh, e.g., because I realize that the Ohio River was a great bridge across half the continent.... Basically, I'm a Turnerian. The movement west is how I inter- pret the region. Which is to say, those feelings are strongest west of the Mississisppi trails, rail- roads, ranching, etc. but I can also sense athe West" far, far to the East.

12

What the

Respondents Wrote

When you put a few questions concerning some- thing they really care about to a few hundred historians, journalists, and creative writers, you can expect to get some interesting answers. What follows is a sampling.l In many cases, quotations are only parts of responses sent. Western Writers of America members are identified as aWWA"; editors and publishers are so indicated; otherwise respondents are members of the Western History Association.2 Because it touches on many points, we begin with a letter from Charles S. Peterson, former editor of the Western Historzeal Quarterly, writing from St. George, Utah:

What a heck of a thing to do to people! How should I know where the West is? Having grown up in its heartland and spent my life thinking about where it is and associating with its histori- ans I tend to be expansive about what Western history is, claiming to Columbus in point of time and sprawling through place, process, and topic to find it wherever my interests and state of mind take me. To paraphrase Mark Twain's happy phrase, aVVheresoever Eve was, there was Eden" . . ., wheresoever I am (in scholarly need and inner pleasure, as well as physical being), there is West. It doesn't make much sense and probably can'tbe applied to anyform of analysisbut [the West] has made for a good life.... = Its role as the last West . . . of the great era of world imperial/Manifest Destiny ex- pansion and as last tip of a romantic/ .s simpler world gives it extraordinary nos- «ffiat'l X3 fltt talgic force or imaginative appeal as does R iStl . . . its utility as a comparative tool as new vf ;8 frontiers" are . . . contemplated. [Also,] t' tz,;ia the way its past cuts across other regional i! ES and national histories fuzzes its dimen- X s sions, complicates its definitions, makes it s3 rm the country cousin of American historzr, N .^ but gives it continuing relevance. 0 IlXi Hofstadter talks of Turner's continuing 5 S relevance to four generations of histori- S

_

Minuteman 0-10 John Hooten

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Walter Nugent

Objecting to the questionnaire's "presentism," some respondents insisted that the West must be defined as a "when" and not just a "where":

William Cronon of Yale wrote,

[M]y answer to the question, "Where is the West?" is to ask: "Which West? When?" ...... I believe that our historical subfield ought to con- tinue its longstanding hospitality to midwestern history as a legitimate part of western history.

John Guice of the University of Southern Mis- sissippi added:

In the larger context of U.S. history... I submit that "the West" as a place and as a frame of mind was/is relative to time and place. It is an academic atrocity for historians of one 'West" to appropri- ate "the West" as a term that applies exclusively to their 'West" or region.

George Ellsworth, Utah State University, wrote: I cannot describe it without a time framework.

West as cutting edge-initial or early settlement- moved. The West in some areas disappeared quickly. 'The West" may still be seen (?) in a few areas or locales.

Thus Wilbur Jacobs, University of California- Santa Barbara and the Huntington Library:

There were many historic "Wests," and the Appalachian frontier was one of the first. Your questions seem to be based upon a kind of presentism. Of course there is now a western part of the country, but at one time it was afar western area. To talk about historic Wests ... you must talk about western frontiers ... the boundaries of the historic wests are from Virginia to California.

Brit Allan Story, Senior Historian, Bureau of Reclamation, Denver:

I see "the West" as a region of the country as it exists at the present time. I differentiate the study of "the West" from the study of "the fron- tier" in America-study of the frontier in America could apply to any part of the United States based upon level of "civilization" at a given time.

WWA member Chet Cunningham of San Diego, wrote:

Are you talking about the Old West or current time? The Old West began in the Kentucky moun- tains and crept ever toward the setting sun ... to the Puritans anything more than 50 miles from the Atlantic Ocean would be the "West." ... When

1. Quotes are verbatim, except for an occasional correction of spelling or punctuation. Omitted passages are indicated by ellipses.

2. The temptation to editorialize on many of these views is almost overwhelming. Readers may have the same reaction. But space consid- erations demand self-restraint.

you get right down to it ... the West is not really a place, it has no boundaries. The West is a state of mind.

Responses to the question involving the bound- aries of the West ranged from extremely detailed and specific to quite broad. Among them:

Merle Wells, Idaho State Historical Society:

East ... from a point just west of Mackenzie river delta, proceed along Yukon's district bound- ary and an irregular line past Fort McMurray, Saskatoon, Regina, Williston, Rapid City, Chadron, Scotts Bluff, Sterling, Clovis, Fort Stockton, and a point directly south (approximately 80 miles into Coahuila); South: through Coahuila and Chi- huahua to a point south of Colonia Juarez; con- tinue northwest across Sonora below Oaxaca to a Pacific coast terminal west of Enseniada. West: a Pacific coastal boundary (including islands) along California as far as all of Alaska. North: along Alaska's coast past Port Hope almost to Mackenzie delta.

Maxine Benson, Denver:

"The Mountain and Pacific Time zones-no place in the Central time zone seems really "west- ern" to me.

A well-known writer and historian who wishes anonymity here:

As I drive West from the East, wherever my discomfort from humidity ends, that's where the West begins. On I-80, it happens at Kearney, Nebraska-zingo! without fail.

Richard Maxwell Brown, University of Oregon: Those who desire inflexible scholarly certi-

tude will not be comfortable with regionalism.

Elliott West, University of Arkansas:

Bob Athearn used to say: "I wouldn't let Cali- fornia into the West with a search warrant," and with some exceptions I tend to agree.

Robert Gunderson, Indiana University and Hun- tington Library:

When I got back to Indiana from Pasadena, I saw a pickup with a bumper sticker: "Eat more Possum"-I realized I was a long way from L.A. where bumper stickers advised me to "ski na- ked"-Both places, however, for some strange geographical reason, belong in the West.

Clayton Fox (WWA), Olympia, Washington: The "West" started just west of Tidewater and

was pushed by succeeding waves all the way to

3. Richard Hofstadter, mid-twentieth-century Columbia Univer- sity historian and author of numerous books, including The Progressive Historians: Turner, Beard, Parrington (NewYork: AlfredA. Knopf,1968).

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Montana The Magazine of Western History Summer 1992

the Parker Ranch in Hawaii and the tundra at Nome.

More laconically, Allan G. Bogue, University of Wisconsin:

I follow the regions of the U. S. Census ... and assume that the Old Northwest begins the origi- nal West of the U.S. Republic.... [The West's characteristics are] latitude and longitude.

Roberta McGowen (WWA), Ulysses, Nebraska: Where your land is so poor, season so short,

water so scarce thatyou can't do anything else but raise cattle, that is the West.

Elaine Long (WWA), Buena Vista, Colorado:

The west begins where the land becomes vast and empty or rugged and remote, and where, to survive, one mustbe more concerned with Mother Nature than human nature; where distance and weather must always be considered before one takes an action.

Arnold Garson, San Bernardino Sun:

The West begins where land and spaces open up to something more than cropland and cities. Driving west on Interstate 80, you begin to notice a big difference somewhere in east-central Ne- braska. . . . There are spaces there that aren't occupied by anything-no people, no farms, just prairie. That's where the West begins. It's-where you can buy a decent pair of boots at a decent price. It's where large animals can be something more than food. It's where water begins to run thin.

Some respondents stressed the multicultural character of the West. Richard White of the Uni- versity of Washington:

The American West is a product of conquest and of the mixing of diverse groups of peoples. The West began when Europeans sought to con- quer various areas of the continent and when people of Indian, European, Asian, and African ancestry began to meetwithin the territories west of the Missouri that would later be part of the United States. The West did not suddenly emerge; rather, it was gradually created.

Kathleen Underwood, University of Texas- Arlington:

I think "the West" is much more complex than we who study itwould like it to be-I contemplate the multicultural past in this region and find trouble labeling it.

Gunther Barth, University of California- Berkeley:

The persistent struggle to subjugate the pre- vious occupants of any newly emerging West.

Robert Maynard, Publisher, Oakland Tribune: It's younger, newer, and less traditional than

the East or Midwest. It is also much more diverse

and less rigid about race.

Lawrence C. Kelly, Denton, Texas: Historically, my West is... separated from the

rest of the nation by its fortuitous escape (for the most part) from the debilitating baggage of sla- very, a factor that enabled Westerners to go their way without expending psychic energy on this destructive inheritance from the past.

Cynthia Sturgis, San Diego: There's a psychic or spiritual West, that is

unfettered, outrageous, simple, strong, blunt, even impolite but fundamentally decent (which is not the same thing as kind). To those who came first, tens of thousands of years ago, it was just "home." So the EuroAmerican concept of Indians as a part of the landscape is, however condescend- ing, in some sense right and correct. We may have abused that hospitality, as we did that of the land and the animals, but our recognition that Indians belonged in a special sort of a way, were a part of and not apart from, was searingly accurate .... The West is a state of mind ... a dream. That's why "gone west" is a euphemism for dying-and being reborn.

Most responses to the question having to do with what section they were in and where they would have to go to get to the edge of the West were brief and'specific. To begin again with Wil- liam Cronon:

There are some people (Athearn being the most obvious) who would deny that the western boundary of this REAL West is the Pacific, since the urban oases of California undoubtedly play core to the interior West's periphery. But if you define the West in core-periphery terms (and I'm drawn at least a little to such an approach), you're back out of the region and into frontierishness again. So let's leave the western boundary at the Pacific to keep the region tidy.

Kathy Gaudry, WWA member from Boise: I would go west to the middle of Oregon where

the dryness of the high desert is replaced by the rain forests. I would go east to the heartland of the midwest-the lower plains-and know that I had left the "West" when areas became populated and green.

Sally Zanjani, both WHA and WWA member from Reno:

I am in the West (geographic), in the Great Basin, on the outskirts of the true West. To pass beyond its edge to a place that once was a part of

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k --

Rolled Wire M. A. McMillan

the West and has long since lost its claims, I would need only to cross the Sierra Nevada into Califor- nia.

Lawrence Jelinek, Loyola Marymount Univer- sity, Los Angeles:

[The "edge" is] just out of sight of the last retirement track or religious commune or 'gringo settlement' in northern Mexico, or just out of sight of the Channel Islands.

Betty Braddock, Dodge City, Kansas: [The edge is] in Dodge City-on the 100th

meridian. Dodge City the most western town of all, Beautiful bibulous Babylon, the Cowboy Capi- tal of the world, the Delectable Burg.

Contrary to some respondents from farther east, Abraham Hoffman of Reseda, California, wrote,

I live in California, which is another way of saying I'm already on the edge of the West.... As for the eastern edge of the West, forget state boundaries. I knew I wasn't in the West when in

July 1969 while eating lunch in a park at Fort Smith, Arkansas, I could feel the humidity, hear the locusts chirping, and see bagworms hanging from the tree leaves.

Question 3, asking why respondents named the boundaries as they did, that is, what characteris- tics set apart the West, elicited more cultural than geographical answers. They fall into several cat-

egories: general answers; the West is a "state of mind"; in the West live good people (positive stereotypes); in the West live not-so-good people (negative or shaded stereotypes); cultural defini- tions; environmental definitions; the West as myth; and finally, process-versus-place.

General, varied answers include the following:

Richard A. Bartlett, Tallahassee, Florida:

I consider the most un-West part of the West its teeming cities. Increasingly they are more similar than dissimilar to eastern cities; and their inhabitants, increasingly, share the same thoughts and mind-sets of their eastern compatriots.

Bruce Walton, Pasadena, California:

It is so difficult to categorize "the West" be- cause it is so diversified from locale to locale. Elevation: the highest and the lowest. Rainfall: the most and the least. The distances are longer from place to place. Our clocks are behind all the other sections. We have the most and best of earthquakes, etc. But all this is today. To me History stops in 1915; since that date, all is mod- ern.

Carl Abbott, Portland, Oregon:

The search for a "real West". . . [explicitly assumes] the historical West was a low-density farming and mining frontier. I could certainly counter that the historical West was urban first

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Montana The Magazine of Western History Summer 1992

and rural second, from the early Spanish and Russian settlements through gold rush San Fran- cisco, silver rush Denver, railroad boom Bis- marck, health boom Pasadena, oil boom Mid- land, and defense boom San Diego. If there is one thing that sets apart the western half of the nation (and continent), it is space or elbow room as a neutral category. The West has longer distances and higher mountains. What makes "space" less than satisfying as a defining concept is its relativ- ity. Dry is dry, and can be defined absolutely. "High, wide, and handsome" has meaning only in comparative terms when juxtaposed against a "low, narrow, and ugly" East or Europe. Never- theless, I don't see any other single factor that will come as close.

Tom Bryant (WWA), Corvallis, Montana: Sheer space is the main characteristic of the

West. The expanse of unpopulated areas, that's the real West. We've still got some counties in Montana that have less than 1,500 people living there and neighbors are miles and miles apart. That's the definition of the west and also the attraction. The open plains, the shining moun- tains and the clear streams-the Big Sky.

Bill Crider (WWA), Alvin, Texas:

You asked where it is that I have to go to get into the West. Well, for me the answer is that I have to go into a book [and he cites Deerslayer, Giants in the Earth, and The Big Sky as examples. But on a map:J Ft. Worth is "where the West begins." But to tell the truth, the West for me is associated with the frontier that's long gone. The West is a part of my imagination much more than it's a part of my reality.

Robert Kerby, Mishawaka, Indiana, (who says he never went off Manhattan Island until he was ten years old):

Intellect-colored principallybytheTurnerian School-tells me that "the West" is a moving matrix of ill-defined demographic, social, eco- nomic, political, and military features. Its specific "place" is almost an accident, conditioned by time and circumstances.... "The West" is the Greater New England that once existed between Natty Bumppo's time and James Fenimore Cooper's; or the Kentucky that developed between Dan'l

Butte Afternoon Shirley J. Quick

.... bv .8" KtF S2 l', t ;..~~~~~ -. .e... ,,&i3 isIf

i i l WE 1 l r iW

I

* ~1 a ...~~~~~~~~~~~'. t _

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Walter Nugent

Boone's first stroll through Cumberland Gap and Henry Clay's retirement at Ashland; or the 909- mile trail of ruts passing Bent's Old Fort until the AT&SFRR overlaid them ... [but] my conceptual "West" no longer exists. The City won, in the end (except, of course, in places that remain largely uninhabitable, like the Air Force bombing and gunnery range we call "Nevada").

Glenda Riley, Ball State University:

Even in big western cities, there is usually less rigidity and hustle than in big eastern cities. A visitor still has a sense of space, horses, jeans, etc. because these cities and their people tend to celebrate their western heritage to some extent. Except perhaps for Seattle, you usually find west- ern-wear shops, western art museums, restau- rants that serve ranch-style dinners, etc. In spe- cific terms, when I wear cowboy boots east of the Mississippi River, I get teased unmercifully, but when I wear them west of the Mississippi, either people don't care or don't even notice.

PaulAndrew Hutton, University of New Mexico:

It is a cultural & psychological sense that is apparent to the visitor. Of course lots of western cities want to pretend that they are Boston or NYC, but they can never pull it over. The sense of insecurity & cultural inferiority (completely misplaced) helps define the West (as well as many "new" western historians).

Wayne Rasmussen, Annandale, Virginia: Resources, particularly water but including

wealth in general, are scarce and must be used carefully, which leads to a conservatism that col- ors all of one's life. At the same time, because the climate is hard and man has little control over it, people living there develop a certain recklessness or acceptance of what fate may bring, along with the conservatism.

Sharon Cunningham (WWA) ,MuzzleBlastsMag, Friendship, Indiana:

Free wheeling, wild and wooly! Wonderful! It was an era, an age when Men and Women could break the staid, stuffy world of Puritan colonial- ism. . . and, it's still that way.

Janet R. Fireman, Los Angeles Museum of Natu- ral History:

The West is distinguished from other regions by its extraordinarily strong sense of place, which is retained along with and despite all else.

Roberta McGowen (WWA), Ulysses, Nebraska: The ethic of the true West is the ethic of the

cattleman: Not the cattle feeder, not the horse breeder, but the cow/calf man, the old, hard

bitten, dedicated, "stay with it come hell or high water stockman." Anything else is just scenery.

Dee Brown (WWA), Little Rock: The old West was set apart by its vast dis-

tances, plains, mountains and forests. Except for native tribes, the inhabitants were from some- where else. They were more venturesome than most, friendlier, crueler, more generous, greedier, more intensely independent, more exploitive of natural resources. Today such differences are rapidly disappearing into homogeneity.

To some, the West is "a state of mind":

Donald C. Cutter, Albuquerque: The boundaries are more psychological than

geographical. [T]he bottom line [is] "whatever the Western historian wishes it to be."

Lawrence Jelinek, Los Angeles: The Historic West began at the Fall Line on the

Piedmont Plateau and extended to the offshore islands of the Pacific ....

The Contemporary American West begins where the woodlands give way to the tall grass prairies....

The West of the Imagination begins in the minds and dreams of the immigrants and emi- grants. It lives on in the thoughts, dreams, and art of the West's residents, immigrants, and migrants of the day, as well as within those nonwesterners, worldwide, who ponder the West at any moment for any span of time for any purpose.

The West of Myth knows no boundaries short of the limits of the mind and spirit, and the ability to communicate.

Zeese Papanikolas, Oakland, California: As a popular idea, of course, the West is

bounded by Madison Avenue on the east and Hollywood on the West. ... I have excluded California west of the Sierras from my map of the West on cultural and climatic and population grounds, but, of course, politically it is the heart of the West.

Robert E. Ficken, Issaquah, Washington: The problem, of course, is that there are in

reality many different "Wests." The desert, moun- tain and rainy wests, the rural and the urban wests, the Indian west, the Hispanic west, the settlement west and the development west. Per- haps the real West is best described as a state-of- mind. The West is a place where the old myths still retain some semblance of reality. The West is where opportunity still exists. The West is where those who work in-doors are still close to the out-of-doors. The boundaries of this West are

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Montana The Magazine of Western History Summer 1992

not static . . . [but] are instead shrinking, for places like Southern California, Las Vegas and Phoenix have fallen victim to overdevelopment, pollution, commercialism and general bad taste. They are plastic places. The West, where it sur- vives, is a natural place.

Shirl Henke (WWA), Youngstown, Ohio:

The West is a thing of imagination, not of boundaries. Americans have given a new defini- tion to the word frontier. Frederick Jackson Tur- ner most ably articulated it a century ago. To Europeans, a frontier is a boundary line border- ing a foreign country. To an American the Fron- tier is as limitless as his own dreams and aspira- tions.

Elmer Kelton (WWA), San Angelo, Texas: 'The West" is probably as much a mental as

a physical state, so that its definition varies with the traditions and the attitude of the individual.

Eric V. Sorg (WWA), Laramie, Wyoming:

"The West" is a state of mind and attitude that has no boundaries-west of the Mississippi and East of California has the highest percentage of "West" but Australia has "West."

Jean Luttrell (WWA), Boulder City, Nevada: "The West" is not a place. It is a spirit, a feeling,

an ideal and it once existed in western United States. It may still exist in small isolated pockets, but for the most part "the West" that I knew is gone. I recently read Working on the Edge by Spike Walker about king-crab fishing in Alaska. The author describes "boom-town intoxication, a sense of optimism and excitement" in Kodiak, Alaska, in 1978. So I would say that in 1978 the West was in Kodiak, Alaska.

Lauran Paine (WWA), Greenview, California:

I would suggest that DeVoto's description of where the West begins would be more appropri- ate to narthern Mexico than to the U.S. West. As for the "eminent historian" who feels he's westering when he's in Indiana [or] Chillicothe, Ohio? Impossible.

Richard S. Wheeler (WWA), Big Timber, Mon- tana:

The West is a place of the mind and has no edge. But I start losing that romance after I cross the great Missouri River, and conversely, coming from the East, that river is where my spirits rise, and bond to the land.... The West was, in our American souls, redemption and rebirth.

George DeBord, San Luis Obispo Telegram- Tribune:

The West begins at the Gateway Arch on the western banks of the Mississippi River in St. Louis, Missouri. No where else.... Rainfall has nothing to do with it. The West is defined only by attitudes and by history.... I live in a fishing village [Morro Bay] on the western edge of America in a state called California. To get to the edge of the West, I would walk out into my yard. To get to the other edge, I would go to St. Louis and put a toe in the Mississippi. California is not the most western of states, though. Wyoming is. Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. They have open space in abundance and history in every saloon and ranch supply store. Ranches there have cattle on them, and are worked by men and women who love the land and believe in it. The West lives on in California, but only in isolated valleys and mountain counties. It is much alive in Bridgeport, for example."4

A number of respondents spoke of-or mani- fested-stereotypes about the West. Some are favorable, some unfavorable, some mixed:

Sam Arnold, Denver:

Westerners teach their children two values: (1) Close the gate! (responsibility) (2) Keep yer word good! (truth & honesty)

Jerry Glenn, Rexburg, Idaho:

Independent enough to leave surveys to East- ern folks.

Elmer Kelton (WWA), San Angelo, Texas: What sets the West apart is an attitude of

openness, friendliness and self-reliance inherited from pioneer ancestors whose neighbors were few and therefore treasured, and whose indepen- dence and self-reliance were necessary for sur- vival. The West tends to distrust unsolicited ad- vice, much less orders from people two thousand miles to the east whose motives and capabilities are subject to question. It resents the attitude that it is somehow still a colony, needing guidance from its betters.

Richard Cheverton, Orange County Register, California:

It's a state of mind, really-a metaphor for the freedom to work our will on the real world-West is anyplace in America where you sense new beginnings. [Its characteristics are] openness- a certain ruthlessness-optimism-brutality, sometimes, but not as mindless as in "the East"- a focus on self-realization-identification with/ control of the environment.

4. Bridgeport, California, is on US 395 about twenty miles north of Mono Lake.

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Walter Nugent

Paula Petrik, Orono, Maine:

The mixture of cultures; the isolation of one community from another . . . the geography both physical and demographic; and . . . the longer I live in New England, the more convinced I am that westerners are, in fact, more friendly and outgoing.

Elliott West, University of Arkansas:

A genuine openness to strangers and a direct- ness of expression and opinion. That peculiar blend of get-your-back-up individualism and close reliance on neighbors. It also can be silly postur- ing and truly unpleasant behavior. (It occurs to me that in question #1 we might set one point of the eastern boundary of the West along a stretch of the old Jacksboro Highway-Texas l9Swest of Fort Worth, a line of low groggeries and whis- key holes where it was hard to drink a glass of beer without some lout in a big hat offering to break a bottle over your head because you were wearing those sissy Wrangler jeans instead of Levis.) Anyway, . . . to a point the West is the West because its people say it is, or act it out. Myth, place, and identity . . . are inexticablyintertwined. Trying to unravel them is impossible; more than that, it also misses the point.

Sandra Schackel, Boise:

Sense of space. Somewhat slower pace of life. Sense of well-being that comes from the climate

and geography. Less pretentious. Conservative. Arid.

Zeese Papanikolas, Oakland: A higher degree of willful self-delusion than

any other region except perhaps the white south before Brown vs. Board of Education. Westerners (myself included) continue to think of themselves as independent, free-spirited, culturally unique, when in fact their land and their jobs, the TV programs theywatch and the politicians theyvote for are owned by ffie same corporations that own evelyiing else.

Nancy Tystad Koupal, Pierre, South Dakota: The West . . . is a place where westerners live

people who often wear cowboy boots and string ties- and where even the liberals look lean and weatherbeaten. The attitudes held by westerners are the most intriguing thing about them. They start out with inferiority complexes and protect them fiercely. They are smug about their associa- tion with the wide open spaces of the west and want everyone to realize what great country it is, but they don't want anyone to join them in this country, lest it become too crowded. Most towns of size in the west have a split personality, promot- ing themselves vigorously and pushing away any- thing that seems too big too soon especially such unsavory things as nuclear waste dumps, landfills, hog farms, and the debris of the out-of- control East.

Cows and Cowboys N. A. Lyon

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Montana The Magazine of Western History Summer 1992

Sally Zanjani, Boulder City, Nevada:

The geographic West is now nothing more than a mapmaker's technicality, an anachronism surviving from a time when the word was weighted with frontier meanings. The true West lies out- side the largely interchangeable cities where Everyman lives. It is sparsely settled (six or fewer people per square mile is a good rule of thumb), arid, and still catches the heart with the breath- taking vistas that struck the early pioneers- empty deserts, rugged mountain ranges, night skies spangled with stars undimmed by city lights. The few who live there are not Everyman in Anyplace. They prefer to handle things their own way. They are tough, independent, individualis- tic, and almost devoid of community spirit or religious fervor. For good or ill, they cling to the credo that "in the West you're free to do as you please."

Judith Austin, Idaho State Historical Society, Boise:

Where the landforms themselves are more visible and more significant than what covers the land.... I'm no "topographical determinist"-but place and experience are and have to be inter- twined, and all of us out here share the impact of place, no matter howwe may process or cope with or be affected by it.

Morgan Sherwood, Davis, California:

The West cannot be defined by latitude and longitude (as you ask us to do), or by climate, topography, biological province, language, demography, ethnicity, economic pursuits (ex- cept natural resource exploitation), creed, politi- cal preferences, or degree of modernization. The key characteristic is a regional chauvinism of the historian and the people he writes about, a kind of ethnocentric belief they are uniquely Ameri- can-individualistic but communitarian, daring but cautious, open to novelty, fair-minded, honest but tricky, clever, morally pure, straight-talking, hard-working-and that they got that way by their proximity to nature which they and their ancestors destroyed or are destroying in order to bring "civilization" westward and northward on the continent. This effort, they think, was and is hindered by the central government and its bu- reaucrats and by the absentee wealthy in Big Cities, including Big Cities in their own states. They measure their success in this endeavor by how well they make the natural landscape look like modern New Jersey. This regional chauvin- ism may be displayed by people who live in the forest, the desert, the suburb, the city, or on a mountain, a plain or a farm, and by bureaucrats and absentee property owners and financiers, as well as by members of the chamber of commerce and their employees.

Other respondents defined the West mainly in cultural terms:

Keith L. Bryant, University of Akron, Ohio: A determination to replicate the "high culture"

of western civilization while preserving a "low brow" culture. Mozart/Willie Nelson/Rembrandt /Russell; side by side. Desire to be "accepted" by those east of the Hudson and inside the Beltway without giving up longnecks, pickups, and NRA memberships.

Elliott West, University of Arkansas: Cultural diversity of a certain sort: peoples

with rooted traditions and attachments to the land

that precede those of the dominant Euro-Ameri- can culture. Those people give off a sense of knowing where they are, of persistence, and, for want of better words, of a subtle confidence that remind me not only that I am on someone else's turf-I feel that also in Harlem-but also that the turf is theirs in a way we other "westerners" are just beginning to earn. (I just thought about going into the Kentucky Fried Chicken eatery in Tuba City, Arizona, on the Navajo reservation, looking up at the menu above the counter and seeing that English was the third language, after Navajo and Spanish. Now that's assimilating the invader.)

Wayne Fuller, University of Texas at El Paso: Much, but not all, of the area was the most

democratic part of the nation, with elections for school districts, townships, and county.... The area had the small, independent school district system... remained basically rural longer... remained sparsely settled long after the end of the frontier.

Bruce H. Thorstad (WWA), Fountain Valley, California:

Raw edges. A rural outlook. It's a place where the natural world-land, animals, weather-are still sometimes seen, and something to be wrestled with, occasionally the enemy. Hence, the West's annoyance with essentially urban people like Si- erra Clubbers.... What I've drawn on your map is the perimeter of the rural, working-class West, where, due to a mix of home-grown family and local tradition plus a generous alloying from Hollywood, people see themselves as westerners. They wear boots and hats without affectation. They buy four-wheel-drive pickups even if they never drive off the pavement. They subscribe to a semi-fundamentalist protestant [sic] denomina- tion (i.e., "get Jesus") or else somewhat proudly see themselves as "outlaws" for not doing so. Sometimes, when traveling in Colorado and other places indisputably the West, I'm tempted to say that the Moder West is where people wear Wran- gler brand jeans instead of Lee (Midwest), or Levi (West and East Coasts).

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Nell Brown Propst (WWA), Merino, Colorado:

Space marks the West, it is still possible to ride one's horse far enough to escape all evidence of the twentieth century. Being able to stand on a hill and see for a hundred miles in every direction must have some influence on the character of the Westerner.

Elaine Long (WWA), Buena Vista, Colorado:

There are intangible qualities that I call west- ern: a range of humor which includes very dry, intelligent, subtle word play and very coarse, rough horseplay; individualism which makes people strive to gain skills that allow them to take care of most of their own problems.

Others stressed environment:

Frederick C. Luebke, University of Nebraska: No one quality defines the West and no one

part of the West need display all of the character- istics of the West. It is spacious, open, and per- haps less friendly in fact than its reputation would have it. Most of the people have come from some- where else (which paradoxically can even be said of many people born there). Its culture is highly varied, derivative, and therefore superficial. It is an exploited, colonial area with an environment far more fragile than many of its inhabitants seem to realize, even though environmental forces are obviously powerful.

Ingomar Marshall Mayer and Bonnie Lambert

Gerald Warren, San Diego Union: We are more mobile, tend to look toward the

Pacific basin as well as Europe and share an interest in Latin America with Texas. We inherit from the Old West our concern about the land and

water. The Federal Government affects us greatly but we tend to look to municipal and state govern- ments for results.

William Lang, Hood River, Oregon: The most important characteristic is the domi-

nant role of the environment on the people who have chosen to live in the region. Weather and landforms are similarly dramatic and domineer- ing elsewhere-Australia, Siberia, Tibet-but the essence of the American West is the interface

between human community and the environment. It is a love-hate & despoil-protect relationship that defines the West for me.

Florence Williams, High Country News, Paonia, Colorado:

[The West's characteristics include] trout, griz- zlies, granite, canyons of sand. Country music, drive-ins. Logging, grazing, federal land agences.

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A few underscored the West as myth-in very different ways:

William H. Goetzmann, University of Texas, Austin:

It is the creation myth of the United States. It is the area populated by the major figures and characteristic landscapes, both urban and rural, of the creation myth.

John Opie, NewJersey Institute of Technology, Newark:

The West is America's mythic region, contain- ing rites of passage, archetypal heroes, contain- ing models of human behavior, and giving mean- ing and value to life. History of the West is sacred history that tells of entry into superpowerful places by extraordinary beings, living a fateful sequence of events.... It is sacred because it is saturated

with power and being. It is a history because it relates how a people came into being.

Robert Smith, Eastern Montana College, Billings:

"The West" has no boundaries. It is a direction and as such it has great meaning. It is the direc-

5. Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains (1931; reprint, New York: Grosset & Dunlop, 1957).

Rocky Boy Marshall Mayer and Bonnie Lambert

tion in which the sun sets and therefore has some very important psychological implications. The sun has long been associated with Apollo the Lightbringer, with consciousness and knowledge. As the sun sets in "the west" a symbolic extin- guishing of that consciousness takes place. With the end of consciousness begins ajourney through the underworld fraught with danger and uncer- tainty. Historians, particularly professional histo- rians who emerged in the late nineteenth century and their intellectual descendants, have confused this metaphysical aspect of "the West" with a physical place, largely due to a material bias which lies at the very foundations of objective history, a product of nineteenth-century positivism.... "The West" is the direction of paradox. It leads to the place where souls are extinguished and re- born. It is the most fearful place and at the same time the place of hope....

Shirl Henke (WWA), Youngstown, Ohio:

Bernard DeVoto perhaps defined the West better than anyone. "Eastward Thoreau went only by force, but westward, ever since Columbus dared the Ocean Sea, westward he had gone free. The lodestone of the West tugged deep in the blood ... And if either Freud or the Navajo speak

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Walter Nugent

true, westward we shall find the hole in the earth through which the soul may plunge to peace." The West is a dream, the freedom to begin again. As such itis the stuff of primal myth and will never be defined absolutely. I do not believe it acciden- tal that Star Trek has become a classic. Its open- ing line says it all: "Space, the final Frontier...."

We began this discussion with mention of the controversy about the West as process, and the West as place. Robert Utley spoke to this:

There are two Wests, in my conception: the chronological West and the geographic West. The chronological West is everything west of the north-south frontier line at any point in history. The east-west frontier of the Spanish borderlands does not figure in this conception.... My geo- graphical West is only partly defined by such precise measures as rainfall, topography, and vegetation. As shown on the map, it is everything west of the eastern boundaries of the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma, with a line through Texas roughly represented by the Balcones Escarpment. This West extends all the way to the Pacific shore, with no exclusions. It includes Alaska but not Hawaii. It includes Canada to the Arctic and the North Mexican states. One big caveat: when the frontier of the chronological

West crosses the eastern border of the geographic West, the two merge and the frontier loses its significance as a definition of the West. In es- sence, this means that for me the geographic West has been the West from that day to this .... For both chronological and geographical West, historical experience is the prime determi- nant in my mind-every element of what we term the westward movement. This, of course, is the Anglo-Saxon westward movement the "new" his- torians decry. The geographical West-the "Old West" of the imagination as well as reality-is characterized in addition by the usual Webb5 measures of aridity, topography, etc., but as modified or even eliminated by historical experi- ence in non-Webbian places like the Pacific North- west or California's Central Valley. Such preci- sion as this definition lacks does not trouble me, for my definition of the West is personal, drawn not only from formal study but from feelings shaped by forty years of intellectual, physical, and emotional experience. o^f

WALTER NUGENT is Andrew V. Tackes Professor of

History in the University of Notre Dame and author of numerous books and articles on American and western

history including The TolerantPopulists (1963) and Struc- tures ofAmerican Social History (1981).

The Road to Highwood E. J. McNicol

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