1 Where the West Is and Why People Have Gone There 3 -- Mysterious West 3 -- Five Motivators of Migration into the West 4 -- Where Did the Buffalo Roam, Anyway? 7 -- Plains to the Pacific or Just Dodge City to the Sierras? 8 -- Agrarian Dream vs. the Old/Golden West 12 -- 2 From Time Immemorial to 1848 18 -- Arrowheads, Large Animals, and Cliff Dwellings 19 -- Cortes, Onate, and New Spain 24 -- Spanish California and Its Missions 34 -- Also-Ran Empires: France, Russia, and Britain 40 -- America's Empire for Liberty 44 -- 3 United States Captures Its West, 1848-1889 54 -- Gold Rush Flood 54 -- Gold Rush as Melting Pot 58 -- Settlement Frontier: Kansas, Nebraska, and Dakota Territory 65 -- Abilenes and Tombstones: Cattle Drives and Cattle Towns 73 -- New Northwest 77 -- Creating the Mormon Culture Area 80 -- California Latifundia 83 -- Future and It Worked: Creating Pasadena and Los Angeles 89 -- West as an Urban Frontier 95 -- 4 Defying the Depression, 1889-1901 98 -- Depression, Frontier Persistence, and the New West 98 -- Indian Territory Becomes Oklahoma 101 -- Nadir Period for Indian Population 105 -- Farm Depression: Irrigation as Salvation 108 -- Riding the Railroads--and the Rails 112 -- Whistle-Stops: The Great Plains 115 -- Great Basin 119 -- Pacific West 122 -- State Making and the Offshore West 125 -- 5 Golden Twilight of the Settlement Frontier, 1901-1913 131 -- Homesteading's True Heyday 131 -- Wheat Country, from Texas North 134 -- Dakota the Multicultural 141 -- Down the Front Range 147 -- Homesteading amid the Mountains 152 -- Mining as an Industry, Miners as Communities 158 -- Ethnic West 162 -- Issei and Nisei 165 -- West in 1913 170 -- 6 Tourists, Honyockers, Mexicans, and More, 1914-1929 174 -- World War I and the 1920s 174 -- Tourist Vanguard: The West Becomes Terra Cognita 177 -- Honyockers' Hell 182 -- Defeat and Retreat: Case Studies 188 -- Oil Patches 195 -- Entrada of the Mexicans 198 -- Mexican Revolution 202 -- Mexicans' Destinations 205 -- Pot Thickens: Europeans, Blacks, and Asians 209 -- Los Angeles and the Metropolitan West 218 -- 7 Dust Bowl and Depression, 1929-1941 227 -- A Pause between Two Americas 227 -- Urban West in the Depression 228 -- Demographic Baseline 231 -- Mexican Repatriations 234 -- Asians, Europeans, and the Nativist Laws 238 -- Out of the Dust Bowl, Off the Farms 241 -- Did the New Deal Affect Western Population? 250 -- 8 War, the Baby Boom, and Slouching toward Watts, 1941-1965 255 -- War Stimulus 255 -- "Relocating" the Japanese-Americans 260 -- Great Exodus Heads West 265 -- Baby Boom 271 -- Freeways and California Dreams, 1945-1960 274 -- Minority Mosaic in Southern California 280 -- Postwar West: A Brief Tour 286 -- Anglos and Braceros on the Plains 297 -- Slouching toward Watts, 1960-1965 308 -- 9 "Where It All Starts," 1965-1987 312 -- Collapse of the Baby Boom 313 -- Immigrants' Return: The Act of 1965 315 -- Alternatives and Countercultures 328 -- The 1973 Oil Crisis, Slow Growth, and Environmental Demography 330 -- Metropolises and Leading Edges 335 -- Purple Mountains and Fruited Plains: The Interior West 337 -- 10 Leading Edge, 1987-1998 351 -- Trends Probable and Trends Problematic 351 -- Immigration "Reform and Control," 1986 353 -- Fall and Rise of California 362 -- Last Tour of the Century 369 -- Some Postmillennial Projections 377.
