ABSTRACT
Frederick Jackson Turner was an American historian whose writing on the American frontier helped define how Americans look at history. "The Significance of the Frontier" stated that modern America itself originated from European and American experiences of settling in North America. Turner himself studied history at the University of Wisconsin and at Johns Hopkins University. He thought historians could write history objectively by looking at sources and extracting facts from them. Such sources should cover a variety of topics, including politics, population, social customs, and trade. "The Significance of the Frontier" matters in three ways. First, it supplied a popular version of American identity. Second, it created a new way of writing history. And, third, it developed an idea of the frontier that could be useful in everyday life. The ideals of intrepid exploring cut to the heart of America's way of life and Turner shows how this relates to the settlement of modern America.
