Into the West : the story of its people / Walter Nugent.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Nugent, Walter T. K.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Land settlement.

History.

West (U.S.)--History.

West (U.S.).

West (U.S.)--Population.

West (U.S.)--Ethnic relations.

West (U.S.)--Race relations.

Land settlement--West (U.S.)--History.

Physical Description:

xxiii, 493 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Alfred A. Knopf : Distributed by Random House, 1999.

Summary:

This is a full-scale history of the people of the American West, from the ancestral Paleo-Indians, to the Spanish conquistadores and settlers, to the gold rushers, to the myriads who came from every direction in the twentieth century, right up to the late 1990s. Everyone is here--whites from all over Europe and the United States, Latinos, Asians, African-Americans, and Native Americans. Some went west to homestead; others to find gold or, later, oil or the wealth of Silicon Valley; others followed California dreams, some out of Old West mythology; still others simply came to make better lives. This is a story of those millions who came--on foot, on horseback, in wagons, by train, by car, by plane--into the West.

Contents:

1 Where the West Is and Why People Have Gone There 3

The Mysterious West 3

The Five Motivators of Migration into the West 4

Where Did the Buffalo Roam, Anyway? 7

Plains to the Pacific or Just Dodge City to the Sierras? 8

The Agrarian Dream vs. the Old/Golden West 12

2 From Time Immemorial to 1848 18

Arrowheads, Large Animals, and Cliff Dwellings 19

Cortes, Onate, and New Spain 24

Spanish California and Its Missions 34

The Also-Ran Empires: France, Russia, and Britain 40

America's Empire for Liberty 44

3 The United States Captures Its West, 1848-1889 54

The Gold Rush Flood 54

The Gold Rush as Melting Pot 58

The Settlement Frontier: Kansas, Nebraska, and Dakota Territory 65

Abilenes and Tombstones: Cattle Drives and Cattle Towns 73

The New Northwest 77

Creating the Mormon Culture Area 80

California Latifundia 83

The Future and It Worked: Creating Pasadena and Los Angeles 89

The West as an Urban Frontier 95

4 Defying the Depression, 1889-1901 98

Depression, Frontier Persistence, and the New West 98

Indian Territory Becomes Oklahoma 101

The Nadir Period for Indian Population 105

The Farm Depression: Irrigation as Salvation 108

Riding the Railroads

and the Rails 112

Whistle-Stops: The Great Plains 115

The Great Basin 119

The Pacific West 122

State Making and the Offshore West 125

5 The Golden Twilight of the Settlement Frontier, 1901-1913 131

Homesteading's True Heyday 131

Wheat Country, from Texas North 134

Dakota the Multicultural 141

Down the Front Range 147

Homesteading amid the Mountains 152

Mining as an Industry, Miners as Communities 158

The Ethnic West 162

Issei and Nisei 165

The West in 1913 170

6 Tourists, Honyockers, Mexicans, and More, 1914-1929 174

World War I and the 1920s 174

The Tourist Vanguard: The West Becomes Terra Cognita 177

Honyockers' Hell 182

Defeat and Retreat: Case Studies 188

The Oil Patches 195

The Entrada of the Mexicans 198

The Mexican Revolution 202

Mexicans' Destinations 205

The Pot Thickens: Europeans, Blacks, and Asians 209

Los Angeles and the Metropolitan West 218

7 Dust Bowl and Depression, 1929-1941 227

A Pause between Two Americas 227

The Urban West in the Depression 228

The Demographic Baseline 231

The Mexican Repatriations 234

Asians, Europeans, and the Nativist Laws 238

Out of the Dust Bowl, Off the Farms 241

Did the New Deal Affect Western Population? 250

8 The War, the Baby Boom, and Slouching toward Watts, 1941-1965 255

The War Stimulus 255

"Relocating" the Japanese-Americans 260

The Great Exodus Heads West 265

The Baby Boom 271

Freeways and California Dreams, 1945-1960 274

The Minority Mosaic in Southern California 280

The Postwar West: A Brief Tour 286

Anglos and Braceros on the Plains 297

Slouching toward Watts, 1960-1965 308

9 "Where It All Starts," 1965-1987 312

The Collapse of the Baby Boom 313

The Immigrants' Return: The Act of 1965 315

Alternatives and Countercultures 328

The 1973 Oil Crisis, Slow Growth, and Environmental Demography 330

Metropolises and Leading Edges 335

Purple Mountains and Fruited Plains: The Interior West 337

10 The Leading Edge, 1987-1998 351

Trends Probable and Trends Problematic 351

Immigration "Reform and Control," 1986 353

The Fall and Rise of California 362

Last Tour of the Century 369

Some Postmillennial Projections 377.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [435]-475) and index.

ISBN:

0679454799

OCLC:

40830217