western migration
Heading toward sunset
Western migration is the movement of people toward the west, particularly the 19th-century American expansion from the Eastern Seaboard across the continent: The western migration transformed the frontier into farmland.
The phrase applies broadly to any large-scale population shift in a westward direction, though the American context dominates its usage.
- Oregon TrailEmigrant route westward
- covered wagonsCanvas-topped frontier vehicles
- industrial hubsAreas of concentrated production
- Manifest DestinyBelief in justified American expansion
- climate refugeesPeople displaced by environmental catastrophe
Homestead Act · land rush · frontier towns · resource extraction · suburbanization · mining camps · retirement communities · trade routes · transportation networks · wagon trains · prairie schooners · religious missions · territorial expansion · Gold Rush · wide open spaces · promised land · labor markets · Louisiana Purchase
western migrationstaying put
Remaining in place
rootedness · settlement · sedentariness · immobility · permanence
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