WILLIAM CRONON: The interesting context for Turner's frontier thesis is the emergence of new, quantitative style of analysis in the United States Census Office. Starting really in the 1880s ...

His thesis "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" mournfully proclaimed that the once vast American western frontier was closed. "American energy," Turner maintained, "will ...

In many cases, conservatives are taking their cues from a concept that Americans may be familiar with from their high school history classes: Frederick Jackson Turner’s “frontier thesis.” ...