Quotes by Frederick Jackson Turner

American democracy was born of no theorist's dream; it was not carried in the Susan Constant to Virginia, nor in the Mayflower to Plymouth. It came stark and strong and full of life out of the American forest, and it gained new strength each time it touched a new frontier.

Each age tries to form its own conception of the past. Each age writes the history of the past anew with reference to the conditions uppermost in its own time.

So long as free land exists, the opportunity for a competency exists, and economic power secures political power.

Stand at Cumberland Gap and watch the procession of civilization, marching single file - the buffalo following the trail to the salt springs, the Indian, the fur-trader and hunter, the cattle-raiser, the pioneer farmer - and the frontier has passed by. Stand at South Pass in the Rockies a century later and see the same procession with wider intervals between.

The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement, explain American development.

The West is now closed.