American Farmer: The Birth of a Myth

Pictured: Not a farmer.

From Heel to Hero

American cultural identity began to coalesce around the “settlement” of the west at the beginning of the 20th century. The country both celebrated and mourned the closing of the American frontier, the demise of the fearsome-yet-admirable noble savage, and the disappearing wildness of the empire’s most recent conquests. Where once cowboys and homesteaders were a White…