Preserving it under the umbrella of different federal departments. The institute of American History posted this 90 minute class. Heres our exploration of progressive era responses to what was understood to be the end of the frontier. If we have time, we will get to a massive adventure in applied history where i got to go to Harney County where the National Wildlife refuge was taken over. I will have a presentation on becausetime permits that was probably the most intense experience on the ground. Very divided over that takeover. I hope i can get to that as well. First, a guessing game. This is somebody who said a lot of things that i think people have forgotten, including me. I have forgotten some of these things. Heres the question. For the sake of a wider audience, i will read it. The Public Domain has been a force of profound importance in the nationalization and development of government. The person who said that is probably not someone you would have expected to have said that, because it was someone who said a lot of things and he or she did not end up hitting print getting credit for that. Who said that . Isnt it fun to be told you are going to be tricked . [laughter] [inaudible] it is in your reading. [laughter] i said that. No, i didnt. [laughter] no, but it is so much that i could have said it. The public lands, they are the core of the way the federal government grows. It is one of those bedrock reasons for saying that 19thcentury west and westward expansion is key to the power of the federal government. Yes. I was going to say that i have sat at his desk. Frederick Jackson Turner said that. He has benefited from you folks being here because i reread the significance of the front tier in American History and i dont know what was going on. There are seven off quoted passages of the front tier strips the pioneer of his formal dress and puts them in a canoe. There is a few thing like that that everybody reads and remembers. This time i thought, i might as well read every word. There is a lot of stuff about indians in there. Who knew . Apparently, anyone who reads it would know that. Frequent references to the significance not necessarily to the significance of indians but to their presence and the importance of settlers responses to them and to the national government. The trails, the importance of indian trials. What i think might have triggered my the 1986 Patricia Limerick response is that it is so much that essay is so much about the eastern and midwestern United States. It is really focused on the not far west. That might have been what set me off in the olden days. Interesting fact about frederick Jackson Turner, he taught at utah state. Yes, logan. That is a beautiful drive, logan. That is a lovely drive to logan, which is neither here nor there. Turner loved beautiful open spaces and i think he enjoyed going there. In his papers, at the time of was an earlyere draft of its essay called the significance of mountains and deserts in American History. Come there making him think, i need to pay more attention to the place i had taught summer school. I hope iay that am giving some demonstration of how peculiar it is to think you know something and then when you actually read the whole thing with care, you think, oops. 30 years or more 35 years or more of misrepresenting frederick Jackson Turner. I owe the family and apology. But it is good, it was a very wondrous thing. That brings us to the columbian exposition, 1893. Speaking of small world connections. The famous episode of american cultural history and intellectual history. Frederick Jackson Turner was there and he gave his speech there that has more in it than i realized until recently. It does leave this question hanging, what a cliffhanger. The frontier is over. The era of World History has closed. The frontier took strangers and transformed them into americans. It is over. Dont stop there, mr. Turner. Please keep going. He did not, except over his lifetime he would make various efforts to find equivalents. He pushed education. He thought education might be the form of continuing opportunity and continuing recruitment of people from outside into the american world. Find his, butto they were nowhere near as compelling a set of statements. And also, at the columbian exposition was buffalo bill cody. They were not on a Panel Discussion. [laughter] which was a shame. Because that would have been great, but they did not need a Panel Discussion because Richard White wrote this great essay in American Culture where he compares turner and cody and brings them into a conversation. In essence, he sees both of them as this is my phrase, and i his coworkers in the overproduction of frontier nostalgia. That turner and cody had their differences and they were both major practitioners and nostalgia for a west that had gone away. So his shows were pretty much in the same spirit as the frontier. What will we do next . We will see the wild west. Remember, you are never supposed to say show. That is how you tell the world you tell the world you are sophisticated and western culture studies. If you say, buffalo bill codys wild west show, that makes it clear you are an outsider because he never said the word show and he did not want people to call it a show. It was the wild west. Did you know you could betray your outsider status of easily . Would you all like to say it together . Wild west. That was really very effective. You will find that gets you someplace in very limited circles. Do not expect to go out in the world and everybody will be, how sophisticated this person is. Frontier nostalgia, richard does cody was the west that seen as lost and departed, was the much wilder and unsettled kind of west and turner was feeling sad about the taming of the west. It started as a wilderness. It turned into log cabins. The log cabins turned into comfortable farm houses. That is the western process. Richard white makes a fine point about how turner did not need to have visual illustrations in his text because if he said log cabin, everybody had it in their minds. He had some of his key terms, stagecoach, wagon train or log cabin. The log cabin to showed up in peoples minds. It would be silly to say, and here is a log cabin. As to why that text can be so evocative without illustration is because the readers own mind in the 1890s and for many years after would supply that. Here are two nostalgiacs. Is that the word . And they are representing they are both successful in their own way. Richards essay is really good about saying, lets not have one be the sophisticated, serious express or of the meaning of the west. They are both equally effective and they are both equally creative and thoughtful. Has anybody read this essay . I read it a while ago. I read it more than a while ago comic given the difference of our ages. I read it many whiles ago. I reread it and it is really good. It gives you something to do if the poor students are, turner, who is that guy . If you want to pet that up, pairing him with cody gives you that angle. He does draw some very interesting comparisons between them and sees them as kind of coworkers in this really broad Cultural Movement of this is important. [laughter] i mean, it is what elliott would say deal with it. I dont know why someone could not research this. I am looking at you, britain. Somebody could look into that. Its pretty interesting they were in chicago at the Columbian Exchange in some kind of proximity and that is interesting, but this is really interesting and important for our understanding of regional conversations and so on. Anyway. Back not back to the point, this is a really important point. This is the term that david , it is a helpful term. Beinger anxiety, not anxiety felt by frontiers people, but people who were not frontiers people who were around in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Americans who were anxious about hanging questions. What will happen to the United States without a frontier . The anxiety this has explained to we are, that will be a rough transition and there may not be anything on the other end of the transition except compounded people. This is a really good book. The end of american exceptionalism. Frontier anxiety from the old west to the new deal. That very clear about sense of cody and turner, something really important shifted in American History. Something really important had been a response to that, that many of the Franklin Roosevelts new deal had that same sense. Sometimes, very explicitly, henry wallace, with the end of the frontier, government had better get bigger. Government has to step in and supply services that the frontier provided. If you do not have free land, you better have some other source of widely available understanding an opportunity. The upsurge it seems to have been hard on people to deal with. I think it is ok to call it an affliction of frontier anxiety. Just to translate that, a growing conviction of some sectors of american society. Expansion produced mixed results, and some of those results were very troubling. I dont know how extremely troubling, and really undesirable. To use one of many examples, i put the phrase at the time that would influence things that would come up. Timber famine. If you are not a beaver, it is hard to be hungry for timber. It is a word word to associate timber with famine. Unitedtion that the states, which had been the most wondrously for estate part of a continent, the astounding force resources forests and resources, in some part of north america had been ripped through, wisconsin, michigan, the upper midwest, just chopped. Cut over. That anxiety, fear, terror, that that might continue. With the far west or the rockies. The same calamity might have been there and the resources of the continent would be a bunch of stumps. Timber famine, the notion that the United States had been astoundingly timber rich my end up timber impoverished. That scared people. That scared, not just people interested in the profession of forestry. But anybody inside a picture of the cut over lands in upper michigan and upper wisconsin. Those kinds of concerns. What are we going to do with this affliction of frontier anxiety . Are we just going to feel miserable, or is there something we can do . Is there an action we can take . One weirdness of reading turner so closely, i realized that i share quite and enthusiasm for phases and eras. I have not realized. Peace and a pod, birds of a feather, we like doing that. Turner and i both like saying, here is the indians, the ranch grazer, the farmer. Just lining things up in phases and sequences. We have that in common. I like this quite a bit. I like it because it is a experience we have all had. Is there anyone in the room who writes so wonderfully that the first draft is beyond excellent and he would stop there, and everyone says do not touch a thing, it is so lovely . Would you care to identify yourself . Do you reach such hostility that you fill it might not be better for us. Any halfway normal person has to keep going. The lincoln limericks were three or four drafts. I will say what you probably are ready know, which is, that is a great habit to have in classes. Before i met jeff limerick, i used to sit in classes writing limericks. It is brilliant as a technique. Pretend you were writing a limerick. You are thinking, but you are sort of going, turner, burner. You are thinking very hard. Moment you think, ive got it now, so you write that down. You look like the most thoughtful notetaker. It worked really well for me as a student. I have classes of students and some of them have adopted this technique. Which is fine, because it is better than drowsiness and so on. It does require you to do several drafts. This is not quite on the main track. I did write some very beautiful limericks about warren hardy. When the professor was lecturing on hardys administration. One has the most beautiful internal rhyme. It appears in any limerick. His slogan was a return to normalcy and he was retreating from all of the International Engagements of the first world war. There was an old man warren who hated all things foreign he would like to and spent his time gambling and thank you, thank you. I think everyone was skeptical when i said it had the most beautiful internal rhyme. It was not the most beautiful internal rhyme. He like to live normally, drunken informally. Is a good strategy have given you for the rest of your lives. You can certainly use it today. I like this notion of the three drafts of the American West. The first draft, we do not know when it starts or ends. That is what we have been talking about, westward expansion, that is the first draft. We have not talked about the timber lining lodging business, but it is in there. The second draft is what we are saying with this session coming into being, the progressive era. The sort of, that first draft did not come out right. Cut over lands. Minds that were once full of activity abandoned. Maybe theres something we should be thinking about. Bison almost extinct. Various forms of looking at the outcomes of the first draft. Floods in utah. Salt lake city with deforested hillsides and mountainsides and floods. It is hard to think where you would look if you dont want to have that moment of thinking. This did not seem to come out exactly as i wouldve liked. Era is thesive second raft. The third draft is still in progress. Whatever features of the third draft, it has to take into account the rise of environmentalism, continued population growth to the point where we really do have to say it is hard to say where western expansion started. It might be harder to say where it ended. World war ii and military expansion and continuing into the cold war. I dont know where you would say, well, period. Westward expansion, completed. Done. Still significant issues of the Fastest Growing region in the west in the last 30 years. This is tied to environmentalism, a more conscious and inescapable reckoning. With consequences and legacy. There was some of that in the second draft. It goes much deeper and wider. This continued puzzle over legitimacy and authority to define progress. Who is really a deserving westerner who qualifies as a person who should be making decisions . People in new jersey, one of the public lands to them . Who gets to say what progress means . That is one way of saying how crucial the progressive era was for the west because its the second draft. Its a big deal. And i believe this is true. If we had more time, maybe we could do this as a party game tonight. I believe this is true. Wherever you look in the American West today, wherever you direct your gaze, you will see something that is a legacy of the progressive era. I thought we might do it as a kind of party game and you have to suggest something. Ski slopes. I could do that one. This is the remarkable outcome and with this in the picture, the progressive era just gets astounding in the scale of its importance. Much of the west is the home of millions of people and it is now much of that is now owned as private property. And even more of the west is still in public ownership. Which is a Pretty Amazing thing, that quotation from turner. Turner did not see it coming. He did not know that is what he was saying when he said the Public Domain heated nationalization. I want to go back to what i was saying early on. What is happening here is that progress from first draft to second draft, from westward expansion to progressive era, it progress course. Progress is changing its course. That shift from the westward expansion definition of progress transferring the Public Domain into private ownership going from that definition of progress to the progressive era, that is a giant and disorienting change. Almost a full reversal in the meaning of progress. It is not a full reversal because the progressive era still has plenty of enthusiasm for finding resources in the west and developing them. It is not a full reversal. Anna how fire would go with saying how much shorter it is of a 180 degree reversal. We cannot be surprised this shift, even though it was under way 130 years ago, we cannot be surprised that the shift still leave some people and communities in the west unsettled and rattled. Here is a technique that has actually been incredibly helpful to me. I just learned about it in february i guess it was a year ago february. This is a person named randy olson, he is one gifted communicator. He is a biologist. He was a tenured professor at the university of New Hampshire. He became more concerned about the troubles that scientists have in communicating to wider audiences. He left a tenured job at the university of New Hampshire and he went to film school at the university of southern california, which scares me. Every time he tells that story, i think it is scary. Are we all breathing normally again, because that is scary. This is the second book. And he knows my husband. He likes my husband did husband. The book. Ally likes houston, we have a narrative. What he offers in it and i really have found this to be almost too useful. The abt method of communication. And, but, therefore. Randy is a scientist and he has looked at different public figures and how they use or do not use the abt method. He has seen a correlation of the effectiveness of presenters. Writers as well as speakers. Heres mine, my adoption of this. And it does lead me to uncharacteristic brevity. This is why it is too useful because sometimes if you use the method, the audience is sort of, stop now. We have got your point. You cannot do that because we are here for a little while longer. Here we have the abt of this. The progressive era was a time of disorienting change and , then you use your and, reformers responded with vigor but some features of our heritage from the progressives have proven to be troubling in their own right. Therefore, we are invited to reckon with the complex heritage from the progressive and positive and effective ways. We can map the esca