The Significance of the Frontier in American History

by Frederick Jackson Turner

A paper read at the meeting of the American Historical Association in Chicago, July 12. 1893. It first appeared in the Proceedings of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, December 14, 1893, with the following note: "The foundation of this paper is my article entitled 'Problems in American History' which appeared in The ’gis, a publication of the students of the University of Wisconsin, November 2, 1892.... It is gratifying to find that Professor Woodrow Wilson--whose volume on 'Division and Reunion' in the Epochs of American History Series has an appreciative estimate of the importance of the West as a factor in American History--accepts some of the views set forth in the paper above mentioned, and enhances their value by his lucid and suggestive treatment of them in his article in The Forum, December, 1893, reviewing Coldwin Smith's 'History of the United States'"

The present text is that of the Report of the American Historical Association for 1893, 199-227. It was printed with additions in the Fifth Year Book of the National Herbart Society, and in various other publications