For me, the biggest misconception is the idea of the West as a land of virtuous freeholders. This idea first surfaced due to Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis, which posited that the western frontier was where American democracy was formed. Turner's argument rested on the idea of the frontier as an easily demarcated line that steadily advanced westward throughout American history. As part of frontier life, settlers had to jettison old European values and replace them with newer, more stereotypically American values of self-reliance and hard work. This notion is where we get the idea that the West was a place where noble, independent farmers lived. But that conception does not hold up under close scrutiny.
In reality, large corporations fared much better than small farmers did in the 19th century West. Tenant farming and sharecropping were common. Most of the land distributed under the Homestead Act of 1862 went to large private businesses rather than small farmers. Mining companies, not individual prospectors, mined most of the gold during the California Gold Rush. Hunters working for private industry were largely responsible for the American bison's near destruction. Overall, the West was much less romantic than Turner's thesis might have you believe.
Sources:
Cronon, William. Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. WW Norton, 1992.
Graybill, Andrew. Policing the Great Plains: Rangers, Mounties and the North American Frontier, 1875-1910. University of Nebraska Press, 2007.
Isenberg, Andrew C. The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750-1920. Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Isenberg, Andrew C. Mining California: An Ecological History. Hill and Wang, 2006.
hi! you'll find more examples in the FAQ*
How historically accurate ... are "Wild West" tropes?
*see the link on the sidebar
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