Frontiers and Borders in the American Landscape

This article examines the historical American frontier as a geo-political landscape condition that gives rise to new technologies, institutions, and landscape types.  Working to synthesize the work of frontier historians Frederick Jackson Turner and Herbert Eugene Bolton with that of contemporary geographers, philosophers, and landscape theorists, this article suggests that our post-industrial territories are a new frontier landscape.  It calls for a renewed understanding of the American frontier and a reinvigorated landscape approach with the ultimate hope of working towards a more lateral spatial politics.