Western United States

History and Culture

Facing both the Pacific Ocean and the Mexican border, the West has been shaped by a variety of ethnic groups. Hawaii is the only state in the union in which Asian Americans outnumber residents of European stock, and Asians from many countries have settled in California and other coastal states in several waves of immigration since the 1800s. The southwestern border states – California, Arizona, and New Mexico – all have large Mexican American populations, and the many Spanish placenames attest to their history as former Mexican territories. The West also contains much of the Native American population in the U.S., particularly in the large reservations in the mountain and desert states.

Related Topics:
Mexican - Hawaii - Asian American - Europe - California - Mexican American - Spanish - Native American

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Alaska – the northernmost state in the Union – is a vast land of few, but hardy, people, many of them native; and of great stretches of wilderness, protected in national parks and wildlife refuges. Hawaii's location makes it a major gateway between the U.S. and Asia, as well as a center for tourism.

Related Topics:
National park - Wildlife refuge

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In the Pacific Coast states, the wide areas filled with small towns, farms, and forests are supplemented by a few big port cities which have evolved into world centers for the media and technology industries. Now the second largest city in the nation, Los Angeles is best known as the home of the Hollywood film industry; the area around Los Angeles also became a major center for the aerospace industry beginning with World War II. Fueled by the growth of Los Angeles – as well as the San Francisco Bay Area, including Silicon Valley – California has become the most populous of all the states. Oregon and Washington have also seen rapid growth.

Related Topics:
Los Angeles - Hollywood - Film - Aerospace - World War II - San Francisco Bay Area - Silicon Valley

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The desert and mountain states have relatively low population densities, and developed as ranching and mining areas which are only recently becoming urbanized. Most of them have highly individualistic cultures, and have worked to balance the interests of urban development, recreation, and the environment. Culturally distinctive points include the large Mormon population of Southeastern Idaho, Utah, Northern Arizona andNevada, the extravagant casino resort towns of Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada, and of course the many Native American tribal reservations.

Related Topics:
Mormon - Idaho - Utah - Arizona - Nevada - Casino - Las Vegas - Reno - Native American

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Major settlement of the western territories by migrants from the states in the east developed rapidly in the 1840s, largely through the Oregon Trail and the California gold rush of 1849; California experienced such a rapid growth in a few short months that it was admitted to statehood in 1850 without the normal transitory phase of becoming an official territory. The 1850s were marked by political controversies which were part of the national issues leading to the Civil War, though California had been established as a non-slave state in the Compromise of 1850; California played little role in the war itself due to its geographically distance from major campaigns. In the aftermath of the Civil War, many former Confederate partisans migrated to California through the end of the Reconstruction period.

Related Topics:
Oregon Trail - California gold rush - Issues leading to the Civil War - Compromise of 1850 - Reconstruction

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The history of the American West in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century has acquired a cultural mythos in the literature and cinema of the United States. The image of the cowboy, the homesteader and westward expansion took real events and transmuted them into a myth of the west which has influenced American culture since at least the 1920s.

Related Topics:
Cowboy - Homesteader - Westward expansion - American culture

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Writers as diverse as Mark Twain, Bret Harte, and Zane Grey celebrated or derided cowboy culture, while artists such as Charles Remington created western art as a method of recordation of the expansion into the west. The American cinema in particular created the genre of the western movie, which films in many cases use the west as a metaphor for the virtue of self-reliance and an American ethos. The contrast between the romanticism of culture about the west and the actuality of the history of the westward expansion has been a theme of late Twentieth and early Twenty First century scholarship about the west. Cowboy culture has become embedded in the American experience as a common cultural touchstone, and modern forms as diverse as country and western music and the works of artist Georgia O'Keefe have celebrated the supposed sense of isolation and independence of spirit inspired by the unpopulated and relatively harsh climate of the region.

Related Topics:
Mark Twain - Bret Harte - Zane Grey - Cowboy - Charles Remington - Western art - American cinema - Western movie - Country and western music - Georgia O'Keefe

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As a result of the various periods of rapid growth, many new residents were migrants who were seeking to make a new start after previous histories of either personal failure or hostilities developed in their previous communities. With these and other migrants who harbored more commercial goals in the opening country, the area developed a strong ethos of self-determinism and individual freedom, as communities were created whose residents shared no prior connection or common set of ideals and allegiances. The open land of the region allowed residents to live at a much greater distance from neighbors than had been possible in eastern cities, and an ethic of tolerance for the different values and goals of other residents developed. California's state constitutions (in both 1849 and 1879) were largely drafted by groups which sought a strong emphasis on individual property rights and personal freedom, arguably at the expense of ideals tending toward civic community.

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By 1900, the frontier was gone. In the news, reports spoke of oil boom towns in Texas and Oklahoma rivaling the old mining camps for their lawlessness, of the Dust Bowl forcing children of the original homesteaders even further west. The movies replaced the dime novel as the chief entertainment source featuring western fiction.

Related Topics:
1900 - Texas - Oklahoma

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The advent of the automobile enabled the average American to tour the West. Western businessmen promoted Route 66 as a means to bring tourism and industry to the West. In the 1950s, representatives from all the western states built the Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center in Oklahoma City to showcase western culture and greet travelers from the East. During the latter half of the 20th century, several transcontinental interstate highways crossed the West bringing more trade and tourists from the East.

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In recent decades, Western cities' reputation for diversity and tolerance has been marred by segregation, along with accusations of racial profiling and police brutality towards minorities, sometimes leading to racially based riots. Nevertheless, perhaps because so many westerners have moved there from other regions to make a new start, as a rule interpersonal relations remain marked by a tolerant and individualistic "live and let live" attitude. The western economy is varied. California, for example, features both agriculture and high-technology manufacturing as major sectors in its economy.

Related Topics:
Segregation - Racial profiling - Police brutality

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