Two Wests: Frontier Myth vs. Conquest Reality

This episode of APUSH for ALL tackles one of the biggest debates in American history by telling two stories of the West at the same time. We start with Frederick Jackson Turner’s famous frontier thesis, which casts westward expansion as a story of opportunity, democracy, and rugged individualism. Then we challenge that myth through the lens of Patricia Limerick and the New Western History, revealing a West shaped by conquest, conflict, labor, and power. From Manifest Destiny and the Homestead Act to railroads, immigration, Native resistance, and Wounded Knee, we explore how the story you choose changes what the West means—and who gets counted in it.