Historians of the American West

Historians of the American West
Name	Historians of the American West
Occupation	Historians, scholars

Contents

Historians of the American West survey scholars who have studied the American frontier, Westward expansion, and the diverse peoples and institutions of the Western United States. This field links biographies of figures such as William Cronon, Frederick Jackson Turner, Patricia Limerick, Stanley P. Hirshson, and Richard White to debates over events like the Mexican–American War, California Gold Rush, and the Sierra Club’s conservation campaigns. Practitioners analyze sources from the archives of Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, and regional repositories such as the Huntington Library and Bancroft Library.

Overview and Definitions

Biographical studies profile a broad cast: founding figures such as Frederick Jackson Turner and Walter Prescott Webb; revisionists including Richard White, Patricia Limerick, William Cronon, John Mack Faragher; environmental historians like Donald Worster, William Cronon (again), and Richard White; labor and race specialists such as Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Roger R. Trask (lesser known), Gloria Anzaldúa; Indigenous scholars including Vine Deloria Jr., Philip J. Deloria, N. Scott Momaday; Latino/a and Chicana/o historians like Marta Cotera, Albert Camarillo, Richard Griswold del Castillo; and women and gender historians such as Glenda Riley, Joan Jensen, Ellen Fitzpatrick. Military and diplomatic angles bring in biographers of actors in the Mexican–American War, American Civil War, Sand Creek Massacre, and Wounded Knee Massacre with names like John D. Hicks, Peter H. Wood, Frederick C. Leiner (lesser known). Collective biographies extend to curators and archivists at the Huntington Library, Bancroft Library, California State Archives, and the Autry Museum of the American West.

Competing schools include the Turnerian frontier thesis represented by Frederick Jackson Turner and critiques by the New Western History movement led by Patricia Limerick, Richard White, William Cronon, and John Mack Faragher. Environmental history threads from Donald Worster and William Cronon intersect with conservation debates involving figures connected to the Sierra Club and policies like the Homestead Act of 1862. Ethnohistory and Indigenous-centered approaches draw on work by Vine Deloria Jr., Philip J. Deloria, Joyce E. Chaplin, and Raymond West (lesser known). Labor and class analyses reflect scholarship by James C. Cobb, Ellen Fitzpatrick, and T. J. Stiles; immigration and border studies link to Patricia Nelson Limerick and Marta Cotera. Debates over the meanings of events such as the California Gold Rush, Oregon Trail, Transcontinental Railroad, and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo animate disputes about regionalism, environmental change, and indigenous dispossession.

Major themes encompass settlement and displacement in contexts like the Trail of Tears and Indian Removal Act discussions, resource extraction in the California Gold Rush and Klondike Gold Rush, migration along the Oregon Trail and into Los Angeles, and urbanization in San Francisco, Denver, and Phoenix. Environmental histories examine river management tied to the Hoover Dam, water law controversies such as the California Water Wars, and land use linked to the Homestead Act of 1862. Race and ethnicity studies focus on Mexican Americans, Chinese Exclusion Act, Japanese American internment, Black exodusters, Native American reservations, and Hispanicization of the Southwest. Political topics include statehood debates for California and Texas, frontier military campaigns like the Red River War, and legal turning points such as the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and landmark cases heard in the Supreme Court of the United States concerning property and sovereignty. Cultural histories explore representations in Western film, John Ford’s cinema, and literature by Willa Cather, Zane Grey, C. S. Forester (lesser known), and Larry McMurtry.

Category:Historians