The American Cowboy: Myth vs. Reality

Historian Frederick Jackson Turner's famous essay "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" defines the "frontier" as a place of westward expansion with new opportunities, heroism, triumph and progress mainly by brave white men. While he writes that the "closing of the frontier" occurred with the extinction of the Western frontier and cowboy's character, Americans have found a way to glamorize the image of the cowboy in the west during the 1800's. …