This is an English language bibliography of scholarly books and articles on the American frontier. It is a selection from tens of thousands of titles. See also: Bibliography of the Western United States

The American frontier, also known as the "Old West", popularly known as the "Wild West", encompasses the geography, history, folklore, and culture associated with the forward wave of American expansion in mainland North America that began with European colonial settlements in the early 17th century and ended with the admission of the last few contiguous western territories as states in 1912.

Surveys

Billington, Ray Allen and Martin Ridge. Westward Expansion: A History of the American Frontier. Abridged ed. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001. Billington, Ray Allen. The Far Western Frontier, 1830–1860. New York: Harper and Row, 1959.

Buley, R. Carlyle. The Old Northwest : Pioneer Period, 1815-1840 (2 vol, Indiana Historical Society, 1950). a major history of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin; Pulitzer Prize. vol 1 online; see also vol 2 online Davis, William C. The American Frontier: Pioneers, Settlers, & Cowboys, 1800–1899. University of Oklahoma Press, 1999. online Deverell, William, ed. A Companion to the American West. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2004. DeVoto, Bernard. The Year of Decision: 1846. New York: Truman Talley Books, St. Martin's Griffin, 1942, 1943. Etulain, Richard W. Beyond the Missouri: The Story of the American West. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006. Fernlund, Kevin Jon. A Big History of North America, from Montezuma to Monroe. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2022. Fite, Gilbert C. The Farmer's Frontier, 1865–1900. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966. Hawgood, John A. America's Western Frontiers: The Exploration and Settlement of the Trans-Mississippi West. New York: Knopf, 1969. Hine, Robert V., and John Mack Faragher. The American West: A New Interpretive History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000. Hyde, Anne F. Empires, Nations, and Families: A History of the North American West, 1800–1860. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011. Josephy Jr., Alvin M. The American Heritage Book of the Pioneer Spirit. New York, American Heritage, 1959. Lamar, Howard R., ed. The New Encyclopedia of the American West. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. Lamar, Howard R., ed. The Reader's Encyclopedia of the American West. Crowell, 1977. online McLoughlin, Denis. Wild and Woolly: An Encyclopedia of the Old West. Doubleday, 1975; UK edition The Encyclopedia of the Old West. Routledge, 1977. Milner, Clyde, Carol O'Connor, and Martha Sandweiss, eds. The Oxford History of the American West. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994; long essays by scholars; online Nugent, Walter. Habits of Empire: A History of American Expansion. New York: Knopf, 2008. Otto, John Solomon. The Southern Frontiers, 1607–1860: The Agricultural Evolution of the Colonial and Antebellum South. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1989. Paxson, Frederic Logan. History of the American frontier, 1763–1893. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1924. An old survey by leading authority; Pulitzer Prize. online Paxson, Frederic Logan. The Last American Frontier. New York: Macmillan, 1910. online Pomeroy, Earl. The Pacific Slope: A History of California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, and Nevada. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1973. online Robinson, W. Stitt. The Southern Colonial Frontier, 1607–1763 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1979) Roosevelt, Theodore. The Winning of the West (5 volumes). New York: Putnam, 1889–1896. Snodgrass, Mary Ellen, ed. Settlers of the American West: The Lives of 231 Notable Pioneers. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2015. Turner, Frederick Jackson. The Frontier in American History. New York: Holt, 1920 Utley, Robert M. The Story of The West: A History of the American West and Its People. New York: Penguin Books, 2003. Webb, Walter Prescott. The Great Frontier. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1952. West, Elliott. Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2023; Pulitzer Prize finalist. White, Richard. 'It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own:' A New History of the American West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993; textbook focused on the post-1890 far west.

Business and trade

Athearn, Robert G. Forts of the Upper Missouri. Hoboken, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1967. Atherton, Lewis. The Cattle Kings: Legendary Ranchers of the Old West. Reprint, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2019. Barbour, Barton. Fort Union and the Upper Missouri Fur Trade. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002. Chittenden, Hiram Martin. The American Fur Trade of the Far West: A History of Pioneer Trading Posts & Early Fur Companies of the Missouri Valley & Rocky Mountains & of the Overland Commerce with Santa Fe (2 volumes). New York: Press of the Pioneers. 1935. Chrisler, Phillips Paul, with J.W. Smurr. The Fur Trade (2 volumes). Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961. Dolin, Eric Jay. Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America. New York: Norton, 2010. Enzler, Jerry. Jim Bridger: Trailblazer of the American West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2021. MacLaren, Andrew C., Mark E. Young, and Sean Lochrie. "Enterprise in the American West: Taverns, Inns and Settlement Development on the Frontier during the 1800s." International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management 25, no.2 (2013): 264–281. online Miller, Michael M. XIT: A Story of Land, Cattle, and Capital In Texas and Montana. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2023. Murtazashvili, Ilia. The Political Economy of the American Frontier. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Weber, David J. The Taos Trappers: The Fur Trade from New Mexico, 1540–1846. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1967. Winther, Oscar Osburn. The Old Oregon Country: A History of Frontier Trade, Transportation, and Travel. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1950. online.

Environment, flora and fauna

Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. New York: Hill and Wang, 2003. Cronon, William. "Telling Tales on Canvas: Landscapes of Frontier Change," in Discovered Lands, Invented Pasts: Transforming Visions of the American West, ed. by Jules David Prown, Nancy K. Anderson, and William Cronon. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992. Crosby, Alfred W. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900. Cambridge: UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Dant, Sara. Losing Eden: An Environmental History of the American West. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2023. online, also see online book review Dobie, J. Frank. The Longhorns. Boston: Little, Brown, 1941. Dobie, J. Frank. The Mustangs. Boston: Little, Brown, 1952. Dobie. J. Frank. The Voice of the Coyote. Boston: Little, Brown, 1949. Flores, Dan. "Bison Ecology and Bison Diplomacy: The Southern Plains from 1800 to 1850." Journal of American History 78 (1991): 465–485. Flores, Dan. Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History. New York: Basic Books, 2016. Flores, Dan. Wild New World: The Epic Story of Animals and People in America. New York: Norton, 2022. Isenberg, Andrew C. The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750–1920. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Malin, James C. Grassland of North America: Prolegomena to Its History. 1961. online Malin, James C. Winter Wheat in the Golden Belt of Kansas: A Study in Adaptation to Sub-Humid Geographical Environment. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1944. online Taschereau Mamers, Danielle. "‘Last of the Buffalo:’ Bison Extermination, Early Conservation, and Visual Records of Settler Colonization in the North American west." Settler Colonial Studies, 10, no.1 (2020): 126–147. Worster, Donald. Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West. New York: Pantheon Books, 1987.

Exploration

Baker, J. N. L. A History of Geographical Discovery and Exploration. Rev. ed. New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1967. Bartlett, Richard W. Great Surveys of the American West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980. Bitterli, Urs. Cultures in Conflict: Encounters Between European and Non-European Cultures, 1492–1800. Translated by Ritchie Robertson. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989. Bough, Barry M. First Across the Continent: Sir Alexander Mackenzie. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997. Brown, Lloyd A. The Story of Maps. New York: Dover Publications, 1979. Chaffin, Tom. Pathfinder: John Charles Fremont and the Course of American Empire. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014. de Terra, Helmut. Humboldt: The Life and Times of Alexander von Humboldt, 1769–1859. New York: Octagon Books, 1979. DeVoto, Bernard. The Course of Empire. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1952. Engstrand, Iris H.W. Spanish Scientists in the New World: The Eighteenth-Century Expeditions. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981. Fernández-Armesto, Felipe, ed. The Times Atlas of World Exploration: 3,000 Years of Exploring, Explorers, and Mapmaking. New York: Times Books, 1991. Fernlund, Kevin J. William Henry Holmes and the Rediscovery of the American West. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000. Ford, Corey. Where the Sea Breaks its Back: The Epic Story of Early Naturalist Georg Steller and the Russian Exploration of Alaska, Boston: Little, Brown, 1966. Goetzmann, William H. Army Exploration in the American West, 1803–1863. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959. Goetzmann, William H. Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967. Goetzmann, William H. New Lands, New Men: America and the Second Great Age of Discovery. New York: Viking Press, 1986. Goetzmann, William H. "Exploration's Nation: The Role of Discovery in American History," in American Civilization, ed. Daniel J. Boorstin. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972. Mann, Charles C. 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011. McPherson, Robert S., and Susan Rhoades Neel. Mapping the Four Corners: Narrating the Hayden Survey of 1875. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016. Nichols, Roger L., and Patrick L. Halley. Stephen Long and American Frontier Exploration. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1980. Pyne, Stephen J. Grove Karl Gilbert: A Great Engine of Research. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980. Pyne, Stephen J. How the Canyon Became Grand: A Short History. New York: Viking, 1998. Ronda, James P. Finding the West: Explorations with Lewis and Clark. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 2001. Ross, John F. The Promise of the Grand Canyon: John Wesley Powell's Perilous Journey and His Vision for the American West. New York: Viking, 2018. Savage, Jr., Henry. Discovering America, 1700–1875. New York: HarperCollins, 1979. online Stegner, Wallace. Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West. Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1953. Weber, David J. Richard H. Kern: Expeditionary Artist in the Far Southwest, 1848–1853. Fort Worth: Amon Carter Museum, 1985. Williams, Glyndwr and William H. Goetzmann. The Atlas of North American Exploration: From the Norse Voyages to the Race to the Pole. Hoboken, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1992.

Frontier justice

Ball, Larry D. Desert Lawmen: The High Sheriffs of New Mexico and Arizona, 1846–1912. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1992. Ball, Larry D. The United States Marshals of New Mexico and Arizona Territories, 1846–1912. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1982. Broadhead, Michael J. Isaac C. Parker: Federal Justice on the Frontier. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003.