1890 - 1920 The Progressive Era 1890 -- End of the American
Frontier -- Superintendent of the Census reports: "Up to and
including 1880 the country had a frontier of settlement but at
present the unsettled area has been so broken into isolated
bodies of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a
frontier line." The significance of the frontier was that it
influenced Americans as much as (or some argued, more than)
European culture. Historian Frederick Jackson Turner, for
example, said the frontier (not Europe) defined the American
experience. He noted the significance of its closing in an 1893
speech to the American Historical Association.: "Up to our own
day American history has been in a large degree the history of
the colonization of the Great West... [The frontier produced] a
man of coarseness and strength...acuteness and inquisitiveness,
[of] that practical and inventive turn of mind...[full of]
restless and nervous energy... that buoyancy and exuberance
which comes with freedom.... The paths of th