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Bibliography of the American frontier

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This is an English language bibliography of scholarly books and articles on the American frontier.

The American frontier, also known as the Old West, popularly known as the Wild West, encompasses the geography, history, folklore, and culture associated with the forward wave of American expansion in mainland North America that began with European colonial settlements in the early 17th century and ended with the admission of the last few contiguous western territories as states in 1912.

Surveys and monographs

  • Billington, Ray Allen and Martin Ridge. Westward Expansion: A History of the American Frontier (Abridged 6th ed). Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001.
  • Billington, Ray Allen. The Far Western Frontier, 1830–1860. New York: Harper & Row, 1959.
  • Blackhawk, Ned. The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023.
  • Calloway, Colin G. One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West before Lewis and Clark. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003.
  • Caughey, John Walton. The American West: Interpretations by John Walton Caughey. Los Angeles, CA: Ward Ritchie Press, 1969.
  • Clark, Thomas D. The Rampaging Frontier: Manners And Humors Of Pioneer Days In The South And The Middle West. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1939.
  • Deverell, William, ed. A Companion to the American West. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2004.
  • DeVoto, Bernard. The Year of Decision: 1846. New York: Truman Talley Books, St. Martin's Griffin, 1942, 1943.
  • Etulain, Richard W. Beyond the Missouri: The Story of the American West. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006.
  • Fernlund, Kevin Jon. A Big History of North America, from Montezuma to Monroe. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. 2022.
  • Fite, Gilbert C. The Farmer's Frontier, 1865–1900. New York: Holt Rinehart Winston, 1966.
  • Flynn-Paul, Jeff, Not Stolen: The Truth About European Colonialism in the New World. New York: Bombardier Books. 2023.
  • Hawgood, John A. America's Western Frontiers: The Exploration and Settlement of the Trans-Mississippi West. New York: Knopf, 1969.
  • Heard, J. Norman. Handbook of the American Frontier: Four Centuries of Indian-White Relationships 5 volumes: 1) The Southeastern Woodlands, 2) The Northeastern Woodlands, 3) The Great Plains, 4) The Far West, and vol. 5) Chronology, Bibliography, Index. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1987–1998.
  • Hine, Robert V. Josiah Royce: From Grass Valley to Harvard (Oklahoma Western Biographies). Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992.
  • Hine, Robert V., and John Mack Faragher. The American West: A New Interpretive History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000.
  • Hyde, Anne F. Empires, Nations, and Families: A History of the North American West, 1800–1860. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011.
  • Josephy, Jr., Alvin M. The American Heritage Book of the Pioneer Spirit. New York, American Heritage, 1959.
  • Lamar, Howard R., ed. The New Encyclopedia of the American West. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.
  • Michno, Gregory. Encyclopedia of Indian Wars: Western Battles and Skirmishes, 1850–1890. Missoula: Mountain Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0878424689
  • Milner, Clyde, Carol O'Connor, and Martha Sandweiss, eds. The Oxford History of the American West. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994; long essays by scholars; online
  • Myres, Sandra L. Westering Women and the Frontier Experience, 1800–1915. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982.
  • Nugent, Walter. Habits of Empire: A History of American Expansion. New York: Knopf, 2008.
  • Paxson, Frederic Logan. History of the American frontier, 1763–1893. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1924. An old survey by leading authority; Pulitzer Prize.
  • Paxson, Frederic Logan. The Last American Frontier. New York: Macmillan, 1910. online
  • Pomeroy, Earl. The Pacific Slope: A History of California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, and Nevada. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1973.
  • Prucha, Francis Paul. The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians (Abridged Edition). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986.
  • Riley, Glenda. Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1825–1915. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984.
  • Roosevelt, Theodore. The Winning of the West (5 volumes). New York: Putnam, 1889–1896.
  • Snodgrass, Mary Ellen, ed. Settlers of the American West: The Lives of 231 Notable Pioneers. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2015. ISBN 978-0786497355
  • Szasz, Margaret Connell, ed. Between Indians and White Worlds: The Cultural Broker. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001.
  • Taylor, Quintard. In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1528–1990 2nd. ed. New York: Norton, 1999.
  • Turner, Frederick Jackson. The Frontier in American History. New York: Holt, 1920
  • Utley, Robert M. The Story of The West: A History of the American West and Its People. Penguin Books, 2003.
  • Webb, Walter Prescott. The Great Frontier. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1952.
  • Weber, David J. The Spanish Frontier in North America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.
  • West, Elliott. Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2023.
  • West, Elliott. Growing Up with the Country: Childhood on the Far Western Frontier. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989.
  • West, Elliott. The Essential West: Collected Essays. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012.
  • White, Richard. 'It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own:' A New History of the American West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993; textbook focused on the post-1890 far west.
  • Worster, Donald. Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West. New York: Pantheon Books, 1987.

Exploration

  • Baker, J. N. L. A History of Geographical Discovery and Exploration. Rev. ed. New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1967.
  • Bartlett, Richard W. Great Surveys of the American West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980.
  • Bitterli, Urs. Cultures in Conflict: Encounters Between European and Non-European Cultures, 1492–1800. Translated by Ritchie Robertson. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1989.
  • Bough, Barry M. First Across the Continent: Sir Alexander Mackenzie. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997.
  • Brown, Lloyd A. The Story of Maps. New York: Dover Publications, 1979.
  • Chaffin, Tom. Pathfinder: John Charles Fremont and the Course of American Empire. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014.
  • de Terra, Helmut. Humboldt: The Life and Times of Alexander von Humboldt, 1769–1859. New York: Octagon Books, 1979.
  • DeVoto, Bernard. The Course of Empire. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1952.
  • Engstrand, Iris H.W. Spanish Scientists in the New World: The 18th Century Expeditions. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981.
  • Fernández-Armesto, Felipe, ed. The Times Atlas of World Exploration: 3,000 Years of Exploring, Explorers, and Mapmaking. New York: Times Books, 1991.
  • Fernlund, Kevin J. William Henry Holmes and the Rediscovery of the American West. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000.
  • Ford, Corey. Where the Sea Breaks its Back: The Epic Story of Early Naturalist Georg Steller and the Russian Exploration of Alaska, Boston: Little, Brown, 1966.
  • Goetzmann, William H. Army Exploration in the American West, 1803–1863. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959.
  • Goetzmann, William H. Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967.
  • Goetzmann, William H. New Lands, New Men: America and the Second Great Age of Discovery. New York: Viking Press, 1986.
  • Mann, Charles C. 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011.
  • Nichols, Roger L., and Patrick L. Halley. Stephen Long and American Frontier Exploration. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1980.
  • Parry, J. H. The Age of Reconnaissance: Discovery, Exploration, and Settlement 1450–1650. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963.
  • Parry, J. H. The Discovery of the Sea. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974.
  • Penrose, Boies. Travel and Discovery in the Renaissance 1420–1640. New York: Atheneum, 1975.
  • Pyne, Stephen J. Grove Karl Gilbert: A Great Engine of Research. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980.
  • Pyne, Stephen J. How the Canyon Became Grand: A Short History. New York: Viking, 1998.
  • Pyne, Stephen J. The Great Ages of Discovery: How Western Civilization Learned About a Wider World. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2021.
  • Ronda, James P. Finding the West: Explorations with Lewis and Clark. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 2001.
  • Ross, John F. The Promise of the Grand Canyon: John Wesley Powell's Perilous Journey and His Vision for the American West. New York: Viking, 2018.
  • Sauer, Carl O. Northern Mists. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968.
  • Sauer, Carl O. The Early Spanish Main. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966.
  • Sauer, Carl O. Seventeenth Century North America. Berkeley: Turtle Island, 1980.
  • Sauer, Carl O. Sixteenth Century North America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971.
  • Scammell, G. V. The World Encompassed: The First European Maritime Empires c. 800–1650. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981.
  • Stegner, Wallace. Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West. Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1953.
  • Weber, David J. Richard H. Kern: Expeditionary Artist in the Far Southwest, 1848–1853. Fort Worth: Amon Carter Museum, 1985.
  • Williams, Glyndwr and William H. Goetzmann. The Atlas of North American Exploration: From the Norse Voyages to the Race to the Pole. Hoboken, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1992.

Frontier flora and fauna

  • Crosby, Alfred W. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900. Cambridge: UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
  • Dobie, J. Frank. The Longhorns. Boston: Little, Brown. 1941.
  • Dobie, J. Frank. The Mustangs. Boston: Little, Brown. 1952.
  • Dobie. J. Frank. The Voice of the Coyote. Boston: Little, Brown. 1949.
  • Flores, Dan. "Bison Ecology and Bison Diplomacy: The Southern Plains from 1800 to 1850." Journal of American History 78 (1991): 465–485.
  • Flores, Dan. Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History. New York: Basic Books, 2016.
  • Flores, Dan. Wild New World: The Epic Story of Animals and People in America. New York: Norton, 2022.
  • Isenberg, Andrew C. The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750–1920. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
  • Malin, James C. Grasslands of North America: Prolegomena to Its History. Lawrence, Kansas: Author, 1947, 1961.
  • Malin, James C. Wheat in the Golden Belt of Kansas: A Study in Adaptation to Sub-Humid Geographical Environment. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1944.

Frontier justice

  • Bakken, Gordon. Rocky Mountain Constitution Making, 1850–1912. West Port, CT: Praeger, 1987.
  • Ball, Larry D. Desert Lawmen: The High Sheriffs of New Mexico and Arizona, 1846–1912. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1992.
  • Ball, Larry D. The United States Marshals of New Mexico and Arizona Territories, 1846–1912. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1982.
  • Broadhead, Michael J. Isaac C. Parker: Federal Justice on the Frontier. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003.
  • Brown, Richard Maxwell. No Duty to Retreat: Violence and Values in American History and Society. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994.
  • Brown, Richard Maxwell. Strain of Violence: Historical Studies of American Violence and Vigilantism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975.
  • Etulain, Richard W., and Glenda Riley. With Badges and Bullets: Lawmen and Outlaws in the Old West. Chicago Review Press, 1999.
  • Isenberg, Andrew C. Wyatt Earp: A Vigilante Life. New York: Hill and Wang, 2013.
  • Johnson, David A. "Vigilance and the Law: The Moral Authority of Popular Justice in the Far West." American Quarterly 33 (1981): 558–86.
  • Utley, Robert M. High Noon in Lincoln: Violence on the Western Frontier. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987.
  • Zhu, Liping. The Road to Chinese Exclusion: The Denver Riot, 1880 Election, and Rise of the West. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2013.

Fur trade

  • Athearn, Robert G. Forts of the Upper Missouri. Hoboken, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1967.
  • Barbour, Barton. Fort Union and the Upper Missouri Fur Trade. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002.
  • Chittenden, Hiram Martin. The American Fur Trade of the Far West: A History of Pioneer Trading Posts & Early Fur Companies of the Missouri Valley & Rocky Mountains & of the Overland Commerce with Santa Fe (2 volumes). New York: Press of the Pioneers. 1935.
  • Chrisler, Phillips Paul, with J.W. Smurr. The Fur Trade (2 volumes). Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961.
  • Dolin, Eric Jay. Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America. New York: Norton. 2010.
  • Enzler. Jerry. Jim Bridger: Trailblazer of the American West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2021.
  • Weber, David J. The Taos Trappers: The Fur Trade from New Mexico, 1540–1846. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1967.

Great Plains and federal land policy

  • Athearn, Robert G. High Country Empire: The High Plains and the Rockies. New York: McGraw-Hill. 1960.
  • Carstensen, Vernon, ed. The Public Lands: Histories of the Public Domain. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1963.
  • Dick, Everett. The Lure of the Land: A Social History of the Public Lands from the Articles of Confederation to the New Deal. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1970.
  • Donaldson, Thomas. The Public Domain: Its History, with Statistics. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1884.
  • Frazier, Ian. Great Plains. Picador. 2001.
  • Gates, Paul W. "An Overview of American Land Policy". Agricultural History (1976): 213–229. in JSTOR
  • Gates, Paul W. "Homesteading in the High Plains". Agricultural History (1977): 109–133. in JSTOR
  • Hibbard, Benjamin H. History of Public Land Policies. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1965.
  • Kraenzel, Carl Frederick. The Great Plains in Transition. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1955.
  • Paul, Rodman. The Far West and the Great Plains in Transition 1859–1900. New York: Harper & Row, 1988.
  • Peffer, E. Louise. The Closing of the Public Domain: Disposal and Reservation Policies, 1900–1950. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 1951.
  • Otto, John Solomon. The Southern Frontiers, 1607–1860: The Agricultural Evolution of the Colonial and Antebellum South. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1989.
  • Robinson, Elwyn. History of North Dakota. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1966.
  • Robbins, Roy M. Our National Heritage: The Public Domain, 1776–1936. Lincoln: University Of Nebraska Press; Reprint ed., 1962.
  • Rohrbough, Malcolm. The Land Office Business: The Settlement and Administration of American Public Lands, 1789–1837. Oxford University Press, 1968.
  • Swierenga, Robert P. "Land Speculation and Its Impact on American Economic Growth and Welfare: A Historiographical Review." Western Historical Quarterly 8, No. 3 (1977): 283–302. in JSTOR
  • Unruh, John David. The Plains Across: The Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840–1860. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979.
  • Van Atta, John R. Securing the West: Politics, Public Lands, and the Fate of the Old Republic, 1785–1850. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014. online review
  • Webb, Walter Prescott. The Great Plains. Boston: Ginn. 1931.
  • Wishart, David J., ed. (2004). Encyclopedia of the Great Plains. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0803247877.
  • Worster, Donald. Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s. Oxford University Press. 1979.

Historiography

  • Billington, Ray Allen. America's Frontier Heritage. Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 1984; a favorable analysis of Turner's theories about social sciences and historiography online
  • Caughey, John Walton. Hubert Howe Bancroft: Historian of the West. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1946.
  • Etulain, Richard W., "Clio's Disciples on the Rio Grande: Western History at the University of New Mexico", New Mexico Historical Review 87 (Summer 2012): 277–298.
  • Etulain, Richard W. Telling Western Stories: From Buffalo Bill to Larry McMurtry. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999.
  • Etulain, Richard W. The American West and Its Interpreters. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2023.
  • Etulain, Richard W., ed. (2002). Writing Western History: Essays On Major Western Historians. Reno: University of Nevada Press. ISBN 978-0874175172.
  • Faragher, John Mack (ed.) Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner: The Significance of the Frontier in American History and Other Essays. New York: Holt, 1994.
  • Fernlund, Kevin Jon. "American Exceptionalism or Atlantic Unity? Frederick Jackson Turner and the Enduring Problem of American Historiography", New Mexico Historical Review, 89 (Summer 2014): 359–399. online
  • Gressley, Gene. "Whither Western American History? Speculations on a Direction," Pacific Historical Review 53 (1984).
  • Hurtado, Albert L., "Bolton and Turner: The Borderlands and American Exceptionalism." Western Historical Quarterly 44, No.1 (Spring 2013): 5–20.
  • Lewis, David Rich. "Native Americans in the Nineteenth-century American West." in William Deverell, ed., A Companion to the American West, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2004, 143–161. online
  • Limerick, Patricia Nelson. The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West. New York: Norton, 1987.
  • Malone, Michael P., ed. Historians and the American West. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983.
  • Nash, Gerald D. Creating the West: Historical Interpretations, 1890–1990 (Calvin P. Horn Lectures in Western History and Culture, University of New Mexico). Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 1991.
  • Novick, Peter. That Noble Dream: The 'Objectivity Question' and the American Historical Profession. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. 1988.
  • Pomeroy, Earl. "Toward a Reorientation of Western History: Continuity and Environment." The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 41, no. 4 (1955): 579–600. https://doi.org/10.2307/1889178.
  • Prince, Gregory A. Leonard Arrington and the Writing of Mormon History. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2016.
  • Spackman, S. G. F. "The Frontier and Reform in the United States." Historical Journal 13#2 (1970): 333–339. online.
  • Stegner, Wallace and Richard W. Etulain. Stegner: Conversations on History and Literature. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1983.
  • Weber, David J. "The Spanish Borderlands, Historiography Redux." The History Teacher, 39#1 (2005): 43–56., online.
  • Witschi, Nicolas S., ed. (2011). A Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American West. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1444396577.

Images and memory

  • Brégent-Heald Dominique. "Primitive Encounters: Film and Tourism in the North American West", Western Historical Quarterly 38, No. 1 (Spring, 2007): 47–67 in JSTOR
  • Etulain, Richard W. Re-imagining the Modern American West: A Century of Fiction, History, and Art. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. 1996.
  • Goetzmann, William H. and William N. Goetzmann. The West of the Imagination. New York: Norton, 1989.
  • Hausladen, Gary J. (2006). Western Places, American Myths: How We Think About The West. Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press. ISBN 978-0874176629.
  • Hale, Peter B. William Henry Jackson and the Transformation of the American Landscape. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986.
  • Hyde, Anne Farrar. An American Vision: Far Western Landscape and National Culture, 1820–1920. New York: New York University Press, 1993.
  • Mitchell, Lee Clark (1998). Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0226532356.
  • Moses, L.G. Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians, 1883-1933. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996.
  • Pomeroy, Earl. In Search of the Golden West: The Tourist in Western America. New York: Knopf. 1957.
  • Prown, Jules David, Nancy K. Anderson, and William Cronon, eds. Discovered Lands, Invented Pasts: Transforming Visions of the American West. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994.
  • Ronda, James P. Revealing America: Image & Imagination in the Exploration of North America. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1996.
  • Rothman, Hal K. Devil's Bargains: Tourism and the Twentieth-Century American West. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1998.
  • Slotkin, Richard (1992). Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America. University of Oklahoma Press.
  • Slotkin, Richard. Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1860. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1973.
  • Slotkin, Richard (1998). The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800–1890. University of Oklahoma Press.
  • Smith, Henry Nash (1950). Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
  • Tompkins, Jane (1993). West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195073058.
  • Weber, David J. and William deBuys. First Impressions: A Reader's Journey to Iconic Places of the American Southwest. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017.
  • Wrobel, David M. Global West, American Frontier: Travel, Empire, and Exceptionalism from Manifest Destiny to the Great Depression. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2013; evaluates European and American travelers' accounts

Military and diplomatic frontiers

  • Ball, Durwood. Army Regulars on the Western Frontier, 1848–1861. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001.
  • Brands, H.W. The Last Campaign: Sherman, Geronimo and the War for America. New York: Vintage, 2023.
  • Dippie, Brian. The Vanishing American: White Attitudes and U.S. Indian Policy. Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1982.
  • Gates, Charles M. "The West in American Diplomacy, 1812–1815." Mississippi Valley Historical Review 26.4 (1940): 499–510. in JSTOR
  • Goetzmann, William H. When the Eagle Screamed: The Romantic Horizon in American Expansionism, 1800–1860. New York: Wiley, 1966.
  • Hagan, William T. Quanah Parker, Comanche Chief. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993.
  • Hutton, Paul, ed. Soldiers West: Biographies from the Military Frontier. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987.
  • Hutton, Paul. The Apache Wars: The Hunt for Geronimo, the Apache Kid, and the Captive Boy Who Started the Longest War in American History. New York: Crown, 2016.
  • Hurt, R. Douglas. The Indian Frontier, 1763–1846. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2002.
  • Josephy Jr., Alvin M. The Patriot Chiefs: A Chronicle of American Indian Leadership. New York: Viking, 1963.
  • Nichols, Roger L. Warrior Nations: The United States and Indian Peoples. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2013.
  • Philbrick, Nathan. The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Penguin, 2011.
  • Rooster, Robert. The American Military Frontiers: The United States Army in the West, 1783–1900. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 2012.
  • Smith, Sherry L. The View from Officers' Row: Army Perceptions of Western Indians. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1990.
  • Unruh, William E. The Rise and Fall of Indian Country, 1825–1855. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007.
  • Utley, Robert M. The Indian Frontier, 1846–1890. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984.
  • Utley, Robert M. Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian, 1866–1891. 1973.
  • Worcester, Donald E., ed. Forked Tongues and Broken Treaties. Caxton Printers, 1975.

Mining frontiers

  • Brands, H.W. The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream. New York: Doubleday, 2002.
  • Holliday, J.S. The World Rushed In: The California Gold Rush Experience. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981.
  • Huggard, Christopher. Santa Rita del Cobre: A Copper Mining Community in New Mexico. Denver: University Press of Colorado, 2013.
  • McNeill, J. R., and George Vrtis, eds. Mining North America: An Environmental History since 1522. 1st ed. University of California Press, 2017.
  • Owens, Kenneth. Riches for All: The California Gold Rush and the World. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002.
  • Paul, Rodman Wilson. Mining Frontiers of the Far West, 1848–1880. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1980.
  • Petrik, Paula. No Step Backward: Women and Family on the Rocky Mountain Mining Frontier, Helena, Montana, 1865 – 1900. Montana Historical Society, 1987.
  • Smith, Duane. Rocky Mountain Mining Camps: The Urban Frontier. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967.
  • Spence, Clark C. British Investments and the American Mining Frontier, 1860–1901 (Published for the American Historical Association.) Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1958.
  • Spence, Clark C. Mining Engineers and the American West;: The Lace-boot Brigade, 1849–1933. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1970.
  • West, Elliott. The Saloon on the Rocky Mountain Mining Frontier. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979.
  • Young, Otis E., Jr. Western Mining: An Informal Account of Precious-Metals Prospecting, Placering, Lode Mining, and Milling on the American Frontier from Spanish Times to 1893. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970.
  • Zhu, Liping. A Chinaman's Chance: The Chinese on the Rocky Mountain Mining Frontier. University Press of Colorado, 1997.

Mormon frontier

  • Arrington, Leonard James. The Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830–1900. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958.
  • Bushman, Richard Lyman. Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling: A Cultural Biography of Mormonism's Founder. New York, Knopf, 2005.
  • Foster, Lawrence. "From Frontier Activism to Neo-Victorian Domesticity: Mormon Women in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries." Journal of Mormon History 6 (1979): 3–21. online
  • Hansen, Konden Smith. Frontier Religion: Mormons and America, 1857–1907. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2019.
  • Ridge, Martin. "Mormon 'Deliverance' and the Closing of the Frontier." Journal of Mormon History 18, No.1 (1992): 137–152. online
  • Smart, William B. and Donna T. Smart, eds. Over the Rim: The Parley P. Pratt Exploring Expedition to Southern Utah, 1849–50. Utah State University Press, 1999.
  • Turner, John G. Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press (an Imprint of Harvard University Press), 2014.

North American frontiers

  • Bockstoce, John R. Furs and Frontiers in the Far North: The Contest among Native and Foreign Nations for the Bering Strait Fur Trade. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.
  • Bolton, Herbert Eugene. The Spanish Borderlands: A Chronicle of Old Florida and the Southwest. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1921.
  • Chevigny, Hector. Russian America: The Great Alaskan Adventure, 1741–1867. New York: Viking, 1965.
  • Eccles, W. J. The Canadian Frontier, 1534–1760. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1983.
  • Echenberg, Myron. Humboldt's Mexico: In the Footsteps of the Illustrious German Scientific Traveller. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2017.
  • Edmunds, R. David. The Potawatomis: Keepers of the Fire. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978.
  • Elliott, Sir John H. Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492–1830. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
  • Innis, Harold. The Cod Fisheries: The History of an International Economy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940.
  • Fireman, Janet. The Spanish Royal Corps of Engineers in the Western Borderlands: Instrument of Bourbon reform, 1764 to 1815. Norman: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1977.
  • Fischer, David Hackett. Champlain's Dream: The European Founding of North America. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008.
  • Gibson, James R. “Russian Expansion in Siberia and America.” Geographical Review 70, No. 2 (1980): 127–36. online
  • Hämäläinen, Pekka. Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America. New York: Liveright, 2022.
  • Kessell, John L. Spain in the Southwest: A Narrative History of Colonial New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and California. Norman: University of Oklahoma, 2002.
  • Webb, Melody. The Last Frontier: A History of the Yukon Basin of Canada and Alaska. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985.
  • Weber, David J. The Mexican Frontier, 1821–1846: The American Southwest Under Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982.
  • White, Richard. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Primary sources

  • Expeditions of John Charles Fremont (3 vols. in 4 & Map Portfolio). Ed. by Donald Jackson and Mary Lee Spence. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970–1984.
  • Hakluyt Society, Series I and II. Some 290 volumes of original accounts in English translation. See also its periodical, Journal of the Hakluyt Society.
  • Phillips, Ulrich B. Plantation and Frontier Documents, 1649–1863; Illustrative of Industrial History in the Colonial and Antebellum South: Collected from MSS. and Other Rare Sources. Two volumes. 1909. vol 1 & 2 online
  • Still, Bayrd, ed. The West: Contemporary Records of America's Expansion Across the Continent, 1607–1890. Forgotten Books, 2018. online
  • Watts, Edward, and David Rachels, eds. The First West: Writing from the American Frontier, 1776–1860. Oxford University Press, 2002; primary sources' long excerpts from 59 authors; excerpt
  • California Gold Rush, from PBS
  • 1860s and 1870s from PBS
  • 1880s from PBS
  • "Closing the Frontier", from U California

Scholarly articles

Transportation frontier

  • Ambrose, Stephen E. Nothing Like It In the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863–1869. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.
  • Athearn, Robert G. Union Pacific Country. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1971.
  • Harlow, Alvin F. Old Wires and New Waves: The History of the Telegraph, Telephone, and Wireless. New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1936.
  • Jackson, W. Turrentine. Wagon Roads West. University of California Press, 1952.
  • Schwantes, Carlos Arnaldo. Long Day's Journey: The Steamboat and Stagecoach Era in the Northern West. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999.
  • Schwantes, Carlos Arnaldo and James P. Ronda. The West the Railroads Made. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008.
  • Simmons, Marc. The Old Trail to Santa Fe: Collected Essays. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1996.
  • Vestal, Stanley. The Old Santa Fe Trail. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1939.
  • White, Richard. Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America. New York: Norton, 2011.
  • Winther, Oscar Osburn. The Transportation Frontier – Trans-Mississippi West, 1856–1890. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964.

Urban frontier

  • Abbott, Carl. How Cities Won the West: Four Centuries of Urban Change in Western North America. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008.
  • Barth, Gunther. Instant Cities: Urbanization and the Rise of San Francisco and Denver. Oxford University Press, 1975.
  • Cronon, William. Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. New York: Norton, 1991.
  • Dykstra, Robert R. The Cattle Towns. Lincoln, NE: Bison Books, 1983.
  • Noel, Thomas J. The City and the Saloon: Denver, 1858–1916. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982.
  • Primm, James Neal. Lion of the Valley: St. Louis, Missouri, 1764–1980, 3rd ed. St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society Press, 1981.
  • Sonnichsen, C.L. Tucson: The Life and Times of an American City. Lincoln: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982.
  • Wade, Richard C. The Urban Frontier: The Rise of Western Cities, 1790–1830. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1959.

Western territories

  • Lamar, Howard R. Dakota Territory 1861–1889: A Study of Frontier Politics. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1956.
  • Lamar, Howard R. The Far Southwest, 1846–1912. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966.
  • Pomeroy, Earl. The Territories and the United States, 1861–1890: Studies in Colonial Administration. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1947.
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