Module 11
Pre-1900 Western-Style Economic Development
Cities in western states are not simply late-starting, warmed-over Eastern cities. The recipe that made them is different and their version of the industrial city reflects a different era. Approaching western states’ economic development is not as straight-forward as one might think—especially if one believes there is no such thing as “the West”. The West is no more monolithic than the East. Within the western context are Southwest, Pacific, southern California, Mountain states and the Central Plains. As we go forward, the reader should be sensitive to the internal diversity within western states. Strategies, tools and programs may carry the same names, but often translate into different things in practice. West of the Mississippi is a fixed geography, but not an analytical classification.
States and their sub-regions displayed their own migration patterns, settlement periods. Migrants quickly discovered Native Americans had staked a claim several thousand years previously. Spain/Mexico superimposed a “Hispanic” culture and population on much of the West before we got there. Pacific states, especially California, possess a history which goes back to the dawn of the modern era. They border on an ocean and that ocean has figured prominently in economic development. Mountain states have mountains through which pioneers slogged to get to someplace else. Fear not, the mountains held minerals, minerals and timber that attracted prospectors and corporations. As to the Central States, for many it was farming; for others it was cattle/sheep ranching. The Great Plains became the breadbasket of America. When we talk about the West in this period, the raw materials of urban economic bases are varied indeed. The older industrial/manufacturing city, already established in the East would never exert undisputed control over the economies of western cities.
Lest we be overwhelmed with the West’s vast story the chapter tackles only three subject areas helpful in understanding future evolution of economic development in the West. First is the story and dynamics of Western city-building. Building upon our earlier Big City city-building, examples of Pacific cities and Denver will further flesh out the internal players, the role of business elites, the velocity of city-building, and the process of city-building. In its good time the two ships of economic development will slowly appear and different forms of economic development will be noticed.
The second theme is the role of the Federal Government in western urban growth. The “feds” have their fingerprints all over Western urban growth and western economic development strategies. They couldn’t escape being involved—they literally owned and managed most of the West in this period—and still retain considerable acreage as we write. The central role played by the Federal Government in providing critical economic development-related infrastructure is certainly one important discussion, which will allow us to segue way into the New Deal in later chapters, but equally important is the ability of local and state governments to piggy-back off federal policies to produce local economic and population growth, and to, in effect, form a significant part of the jurisdictional economic base. The federal government played no such role in the formation of the eastern industrial city.
The third theme occupies no fixed location in the chapter, but underlies and drives economic urban growth and economic development throughout this period: the formation of the western regional competitive hierarchy and the continued impact of domestic and immigrant population mobility. We take western population movement as a given when we think of the West—but it is the sine qua non underlying this chapter. It is not our purpose to focus on why those fools did what they did—settle and develop a hostile wilderness and create a civilization—but they did it. I would have been tempted to stay put in Philadelphia! Those that made the trek were usually younger; they certainly were tougher. The emotion behind formation of the eastern competitive hierarchy is mostly lost in history; not so for the West. The fierceness and competitiveness of the new arrivals provide us vivid examples of real life competitive economic development in action. The settlement of the West is economic development of growth, to be sure, but it is very apparent that first settlement can often mean grow or die. Planned communities will have their place in the West, but not in these years. City-building, or boosterism as it is usually dismissed as being, is more than just tinged with emotion—it is the spirit that formed our cities. Economic development is fortunate to have tapped into that emotion. The politics of ED can be brutal and like the proverbial sausage-making not fun to watch—but …!
Our chapter starts when western states were (mostly) U.S. territories, administered by the federal government–by Congress, and a weak, inefficient, personalistic, patronage-ridden and too often corrupt system of federal bureaucracies. California (1850), Oregon (1859), Kansas (1861), Nevada (1864) and Nebraska (1867) entered as states into the Union around the Civil War. The remaining territorial governments were governed, if that is the correct word, ultimately by Congress itself[i]. Settlement that flowed through this morass was a process that transferred land from federal land ownership to private hands. Homesteading, for example, is people-focused economic development. That means railroads were not only EDOs, forming cities, but also CDOs providing people with a new start in life and work. What a revolting thought it must be that community development can be so lucrative and corrupt an endeavor. So let’s turn our attention to western city-building.
“You Ain’t in Philadelphia Now, Darling”
The Golden Age of Building Cities
City-building, as demonstrated in Chapter 7-(mill/cotton/saw towns, satellite cities, and brand new cities such as Miami and Texan cities) was not restricted to western states. Early 19th century Midwest city-building (Chicago aside) is flat-out unknown[ii]. Still, the images most associate with pre-1900 city-building are those of the American West. The very first wagon train (3 wagons) used the Santa Fe Trail starting in 1822 and the first Oregon Trail wagon train (10 wagons) left St. Louis in 1830. Likely, the first wagon train to Oregon, using amazingly the Oregon Trail, left Independence with 70 pioneers in 1841; the grand-daddy of wagon trains (1000 settlers) left Elm Grove Missouri in 1843. In its day, this pre-Civil War migration was labeled “the Great Emigration”. San Francisco commenced a second phase of city-building with its 1848 Gold Rush and California’s 1850 statehood (mostly by sea). Civil War era emigration jumped off from Missouri (Kansas City and St. Joseph) into Kansas and Colorado (Denver)–in anticipation of future railroad construction. It declined after the transcontinental railroad’s opening in 1867—why would you go by wagon after that!
Initial city-building population migration can be a relatively low volume affair. The numbers of people involved in western city growth during this era are not huge. The growth rates are huge, however, and distort our understanding of these early years. Using raw population counts instead of rates, the picture that emerged; with some exceptions, pre-1900 western city growth was not explosive. Citing census counts for 1880 and 1900 western cities reveal fairly subdued levels of population growth: Carson City, NV 4229 to 2100 (oops); Tulsa OK 0 to1390; Oklahoma City 0 to 10037; Austin TX 11013 to 22258; El Paso TX 736 to 15906; Phoenix AZ 1708 to 5544; Albuquerque NM 0 to 6238; Tucson AZ 7007 to 7531; Boulder CO 3069 to 6150; Provo UT 3432 to 6185; Wichita KS 4911 to 24,671; Topeka KS 15452 to 33608; San Diego CA 2637 to 17700 and Tacoma WA 1098 to 37714 — fourteen cities in all with a combined population less than 200,000 in 1900—more than three-fifths of which resided in Kansas and Texas, the West’s eastern periphery.
.
But then there were Salt Lake City 20768 to 53,531; Seattle WA 3533 to 80671; Portland OR 17577 to 90426; Los Angeles CSA 11183 to 102479; Denver CO 35629 to 133859; and San Francisco 233959 to 342782. A few cities did capture a lot of migrants in the pre-1900 period.
Real growth in most Western cities occurred after 1900. A shared pattern of growth among all the sub-regions of the West, however, is hard to discover. Each city/sub-region seems to have beat to its own drummer. The simple timing of population expansion is one example of divergent patterns. Some grew most between 1900 and 1910 (Carson City, Salt Lake City, Denver, Seattle), others between 1910 and 1920 (El Paso); most grew very robustly during the roaring twenties. A few even grew during the Depression decade, a rarity (Austin, Phoenix and San Diego).
Denver grew by nearly 60% to 213,000 by 1910, San Diego more than doubled by 1910 and then nearly doubled each decade until the Depression (1930); Albuquerque grew to 26000 by 1930; Phoenix exploded between 1910 and 1930, but in raw numbers only reached 48000. El Paso exceeded 102000 by 1930, but Austin only climbed to 53000 in that period. Oklahoma City on the other hand grew 540% between 1900 and 1919 (to 64000) and continued its spurt reaching over 185,000 by 1930. Tulsa likewise grew significantly each decade from 1,390 in 1900 to nearly 142000 by 1930. Salt Lake City came within a hair of garnering 150000 residents by 1940; but Provo UT only attained 14700 in 1930; And Carson City NV whose 1900 population of 2100, declined to a bit less than 1600 in 1930. San Francisco on the other hand with 634000 residents in 1930 sparkled, and, oh yes, Los Angeles, home to 1.2 million in 1930 and 1.5 million in 1940, overtook San Francisco in 1920 becoming the most populous city in the West—and since 1984 the second largest U.S. city.
One feature of early western urbanization that should be noted is its velocity. Velocity led Barth to develop his “instant city” concept—based on the incredible rates of initial growth that many western cities “enjoyed” (Barth, 1975)[iii]Garth asserts some Western cities (Denver, Salt Lake City and San Francisco, but also Santa Fe) grew so fast (within two generations) that economic and social-cultural institutionalization was collapsed into a very short time period compared to that experienced by Eastern cities. Centuries of development and growth were collapsed into as little as a decade. The strain rapid growth put on institutionalization within these cities, and at minimum overwhelmed any effort, meager though it may have been, toward planning and efficient land usage. Caught up in a brand new boom town, one does not expect to see a great deal of rationality running around. Quick import from key “model cities” led to copying legislation, law, and institutions—of all types.
From 1910 to the present, the West has been the second most urban region (Northeast the first). The West’s post-1900 population was overwhelming urban[iv], not rural. Contrary to TV, the real Western should have been filmed in a city, not on the ranch. Still, let’s put western expansion in perspective. Chicago’s 1900 population was about 1.7 million; it nearly doubled by 1920. In 1900, more than three of five Americans lived in the North and Midwest–5% lived in the West. By 1930 the West doubled its share and remained at 10% through 1940. The North actually grew in this period, and the Midwest lost more population than the South (Hobbs & Stoops, 2002, pp. 19-20 Tables 1-7 & 1.8).
Land Speculation and Homesteading: Railroad-style CD
Privatist land speculation typified a city’s earliest years and in western states, private land speculation followed from how Congress transferred federal land to private ownership: land grants to private individuals and companies. Three forms of land grants were characteristic of western land settlement (1) homesteading to private individuals (288m acres), (2) grants to military veterans (61m acres), and (3) grants to railroad companies (94m acres). “Despite federal intentions, there was a great deal of speculative acquisition of land. Some homesteaders clearly behaved more like small scale speculators than (yeomen) family farmers… there were also many land companies which controlled sizeable areas…. There was also more renting of property than was intended (because) farm creditors foreclosed on unpaid debts” (Ward, 1998, pp. 12-3). Too many initial homesteaders “flipped” their homestead for a quick profit; land sales companies acquired the homestead. Between railroads and land speculator companies, individuals became marketing targets rather than homebuyers. In many ways, homesteaders were the proverbial razor-blade, not the razor—i.e. homebuyers were where the profits were, and the payback for infrastructure and startup costs.
The 1862 Homestead Act and Trans-continental Railroad legislation supposedly built upon lessons learned from the 1850’s settlement of Illinois ICRR experience. The land grant process added hugely to the promotional and advertising whirlwind that followed. Railroad companies followed ICRR’s model with intensive and extensive advertising to promote settlement and traffic. Most prominent among these was the first trans-continental railroad, the Union Pacific, with its vast 12 million acre land grant. “By the 1870’s UP was spending an average of $80,000 per annum on advertising”. In 1874 alone that railroad took space in 2311 newspapers and magazines. In 1882, (the Northern Pacific Railroad) distributed over 600,000 copies of its publications in English, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Dutch (Ward, 1998, pp. 13-5). Railroads not only provided access; they delivered future citizens, taxpayers and customers. The exploitive “bribery” long associated with railroad routes, to the prospective urban center was simply a cost that had to be paid. Needless to say, the federal monitoring of this process was non-existent—the subsequent Credit Mobilier scandal that toppled the Grant administration is testimony to that. This homesteading was a flawed process at best.
Still, that was the post-Civil War environment within which western city-building happened. Railroads developed their own cities—acting as the city-builder. “Cheyenne in Wyoming was a notably successful town promotion by the Union Pacific Railroad. Other railroad towns included Reno, Nevada on the Central Pacific, and Butte, Montana on the Northern Pacific” (Ward, 1998, p. 21). Rivalry among competing railroad companies focused around their people attraction programs. Southern California was a principal beneficiary of inter-railroad rivalries, as was Kansas (a key hub area). Targeted media placement, low cost excursion trains, rate subsidization, and image/branding-like strategies were developed for these targeted geographies and groups.
Homesteading and the railroad attraction programs were arguably the most aggressive (and effective) people-attraction initiative in our history. The Homestead Act ultimately sent 1.6 million households into the West, primarily to Nebraska, South and North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Kansas and Oklahoma. They were a critical factor in the Los Angeles speculative land rush that literally put the city on the map. Despite the warm and uplifting tales of Willa Cather, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Broadway play “Oklahoma”, the homesteading experience was much like watching sausage being made. The same could be said for western states’ city-building.
The Eastern Hegemony Stretches its Tentacles’
Central place proponents (1950’s/1960’s) argued and conclusively demonstrated that given uniform terrain and even distributed natural resources almost precisely spaced urban centers, dominated by a larger center city (mono-nucleated). Within the metropolitan market area “rings” of cities with specialized smaller markets developed at precise intervals based on market areas for firms. The urban pattern on which central place theorists based their assumptions was an already mature urban landscape that in some form had existed for a hundred years or more. As a description of western city-building, however, it delivers little insight into the process of how that precise, rational system came about. Worse, it does not envision the events and change that drastically affected the emerging western urban landscape.
Transportation (and agricultural) innovation in the period was constant, and disruptive. Geographic advantages could prove temporary. Minerals were discovered; and then they played out. Droughts wiped out settlements, territorial legislatures could be bribed and interior cities could become state capitols, or be awarded a prized institution such as a prison, county seat, or a state college. The army or federal government always willing to set up a fort or offices/court buildings, and supply depots. Railroads built cities as part of their business plan; they also required repair facilities and storage areas en route, setting up secondary and rival cities in the hinterland (Shortridge, 2004, p. Chapter 1). Access to rail explains much, but once achieved what explains subsequent growth?
More helpful was the little-known “mercantile model” (Vance Jr., 1970) which when combined with Frederick Jackson’s Turner’s frontier model offered insights into the earliest years of western cities. Turner’s “Frontier Thesis” posited a subsistence farming, homestead, economic base from which small merchant towns emerged. Accumulated capital led to further investments sufficient to support a small city—hinterland-based city-building. The crazy quilt, come and go, urban pattern that resulted did not in any way match the image, created a hundred years later, by central place advocates. Barth, without intention, described in his “Instant Cities” how discovery of gold lured prospectors to San Francisco by the thousands. Entrepreneurial merchants, risk-takers in the extreme (most probably failed) lived off the prospectors, and those that survived accumulated capital and acquired land—both essential for future investment in the city. The Homestead Act brought a different cast of characters into a non-existent community. Brigham Young when he pitched camp one night (1847), he brought 148 new citizens to Salt Lake City. Five years later the Salt Lake City held over 16000 residents.
“Trade was always the dominant consideration”—for land speculators, agricultural settlers, merchants, army bases, and railroads. That’s why port cities were the earliest—and why the latter period cattle towns, the end to the trail before processing and shipping, had the edge. The story of the West meant cities taking off, encountering competition from rivals, and falling behind or beating them. Urban geographic competition was real, constant, and rivalries were bitter and unrestrained. In this world of city-building logistical, non-economic and geographical factors proved much more helpful—and more interesting.
In the mercantile model trade developed around wholesale, not retail. Given access to far away markets, growth could occur. Without it stagnation. Initial capital was supplied by older, east of the Mississippi Big Cities merchants who sought new markets. They invested in frontier communities of which they (1) become aware and (2) were convinced the community held potential advantages that could result in more sales/profits. Trade took many forms in these early years, but “points of attachment” on or near transportation routes becomes necessary once a certain scale was achieved. Towns that convinced eastern merchants they can serve as a “point of attachment”, a trading center for eastern goods, acquired a branch, distribution center, sales center, and eventually perhaps a processing center of some kind. Will Rogers’ Tulsa promotion was not outside of economic and geographical rationality.
In this subtle manner, the North/Midwest hegemony established a more benignly-perceived economic colonialist control over the young fledgling cities of the West. Successful cities became “gateway” cities into a larger hinterland for the company. Further refinements of the mercantile model suggest these young growing cities developed a distinctive regional culture and self-image that emerged from their successful domination over hinterland-regional rivals (Meinig, 1972). Conquest of hinterlands meant not only economic success for its business community, but more importantly, growth provided the security that the city itself would not be conquered. Boosterism, a derivative of that process, and an ED strategy, possessed some depth and a rationale beyond exuberant, unsophisticated provincial businessmen seeking profits.
Aspiring new cities actively engaged in ED strategies, decisions, and initiatives led by their business community that encourage this process along. In a crass sense, the mercantile model provides an understanding why cities “purchase” access from railroads, and for the “boosterism” that so dominated the contemporary image of this period. It also, of course, provides a context for understanding the often outrageous forms of attraction and promotion that were also characteristic of the era. It underscores the “growth or die” complex that saturated the western Privatist concepts of urban growth and urban hierarchies. Growth achieved from this city-building was never completely hap-hazard. “Residents and civic leaders had a vision of the kind of city they wanted to build. This image was drawn from the great metropolises of the East … whose ways, development and culture young settlements hoped to emulate … their deepest urge was to be like the great cities across the nation … This emulation characterized nearly every aspect of development—from the width of the streets, to the fashions of the people who strolled along them”. (Wade, 1959, p. 134).
Institutions were copied just like fashions; chamber of commerce were founded, school systems started, the grid system employed, libraries built, and street lamps installed as quickly as possible. For us a critical area was municipal law, incorporation [municipal home rule and civic associations], law codes, hybrid EDOs—trips were made regularly back East to acquire copies of legislation, constitutions, and judicial decisions. Water works independent boards and commissions were established, transportation innovations installed as cities grew to sufficient scale. Describing an earlier period, but carrying over to the West’s golden city-building era, one can see western cities evolved as had Midwestern cities a half-century earlier. Substitute Chicago or Kansas City for Philadelphia and it works:
“Though Western towns drew upon the experience of all the major Atlantic [and Midwestern] cities the special source of municipal wisdom was Philadelphia [and later Chicago]. Having said that “the urban origin of Western town dwellers [and their civic/business leadership] was significant for it meant that the new cities would be built on the image of the older ones … Hence it is not surprising that Western towns bore a physical likeness to Eastern ones. … The urge to imitate sprang from deep needs, giving the urban pioneers a lifeline to the past and a vision of grand future”. (Wade, 1959, pp. 318-21)
City-Building, City-Builders and Business Elites
“Nature does not make cities”, William Angel Jr. writes, “People make them”. “The ‘taming’ of the frontier can be viewed … as the process whereby entrepreneurs developed cities by breaking through the barriers erected by the seemingly impenetrable wilderness … [such] innovation may require the combined efforts of several entrepreneurs. Altering a city’s infrastructure to make it more economically attractive may necessitate community entrepreneurial initiatives” (Angel Jr, 1977, p. 109) Colorful individual city-building entrepreneurs dominate the city-building saga. But there is more to city-building than the urban entrepreneur.
Successful city-building is not foreordained. Kick-starting a community from scratch, carving it out of the wilderness, and convincing other fools that this squalid heaven on earth is the place to live requires motivation, determination and a weird, greedy, opportunistic, and narcissistic personality. It is a complex process that can support many conceptual models—and ideological diatribes. Individuals involved in city-building, especially in western cities of this period, are an interesting cast of characters, but equally important, they are somewhat unique from the post-Civil War corporatist/plantation South, and the uprooted New England town characteristic if the Yankee Diaspora. Western city-building is individual city-builders, railroad-corporatist, marketing-based—and above all speculative.
Entrepreneurial city builders such as Denver’s Latimer and Gilpin connected the city to the railroad, ensuring survival and future growth. Certainly, every new city had a city builder, even the ghost towns. We read of the successful ones in our history. Interesting examples of entrepreneurial city-builders can be found in Tacoma, Washington (Morton McCarver), Portland, Oregon (Henry Corbett), Oakland, California (F.M. Smith), San Diego (William Heath Davis), and one the reader would never usually think of as a Privatist city builder-booster, Brigham Young (Salt Lake City). City builders had their day, but the jurisdictional policy system moved on. Railroad influence over jurisdictions changed its character and slowly dissipated once the transportation link was made and the community became established. Local businessmen, the boosters, gradually took over. This is where the chamber comes in.
City builders created coalitions, and oligarchies developed. Oligarchies institutionalized and became more mass-based: boards of trade and chambers followed; even unions might appear. The business community fragmented along sector lines, each sector establishing an autonomous organizational identity. The economic base could change dramatically and radically, setting in motion an enormous burst of growth. By the time these cities reached the threshold of thinking about becoming Big Cities, they evolved their own heritage and path.
Involvement of a jurisdiction’s business community was essential to successful city-building. The citizenry has not yet arrived, or has not sunk roots sufficiently to participate meaningfully in policy-making. Businesspeople tied to the community by risk and by profit dominate city-building policy systems. City business elites cooperate, contest, and eventually overturn the initial power of railroads/harbor interests–and they institutionalize the entrepreneurial city-builders. Once linked to a railroad, the issue quickly turns to railroad rates and service quality; that dialogue tends toward zero-sum. Entrepreneurial city-builders entrepreneurs flame out or pass from the scene. Out of town corporate branch managers (mining/extraction industries especially) often will fight, or join forces, with the railroads as self-interest dictates. City-building develops into a new distinctive policy system phase in its life-cycle.
As new ‘upstart’ cities appeared in the newly colonized agricultural lands, their priorities were to attract people and investment as rapidly as possible. In its early stages, it was a process driven primarily by land speculation though other concerns gradually became more important, involved the boosters of these upstart places trumpeting their advantages, real and imagined, to any who would listen …As communities became more settled a wider range of more local interests became part of the boosterist ethos, selling their towns to potential settlers and investors. Prominent among such interests were the local newspaper editors who used their columns to proclaim and reinforce a spirit of progress and enterprise. Local businessmen of all kinds vigorously promoted their towns, increasingly through collective bodies such as local Boards of Trade, Chambers of Commerce and Town Councils. (Ward, 1998, p. 9 & Chap 2)
Unlike their eastern counterparts, western chambers are not one percenters or industrialists. Western city-building business elites form around newspapers and regional financial institutions. Downtown “merchants” provide spirit and numerical dominance. There are few (Progressive) professional elites (law, architecture) in the early western city. Homesteading and entrepreneurism in these fledgling, sparsely populated urban centers deprived Progressivism of much of its purpose, and most of its constituency. A weakened Progressive business elite made way for “cowboy Privatism”. Cowboy privatism was characterized by the politics of closed business elite/sparsely populated urban areas. Maybe I’ve been watching too many John Wayne movies, but in the early New England Town, the town meeting was in the church; in the West it was more likely to be the saloon.
Described by Blaine Brownell as a “commercial-civic elite”, by David Goldfield as “progress and tradition” or by Richard M. Bernard as “growth without social change”, the early city-building policy system pursued economic development objectives defined by its business community, supported by a weak, business dominated, political class. There was no such thing as a bureaucracy–unless Wyatt Earp and his brothers can be considered a bureaucracy. Boosterism advocated by these small business elites, if successful, brought in considerable numbers of residents. Certainly, this was ED intended to achieve growth; this business coalition can unashamedly be described as a “growth coalition”.
City-Building—Beyond Boosterism
City-building as a concept operates on two levels: it is a phase of a city’s life cycle (assuming such exists) and it is a ED strategy which includes several sub-strategies including attraction (both people and business), institution-building, infrastructure, entrepreneurism, and easily includes the lowest levels of the Maslowian needs hierarchy (law and order, for example) and basic quality of life (a theatre). One might be wary of mindless conflating the two. How the city-building phase can be anything other than about growth is, to me, inescapable. Growth is not just GNP; it is more likely to be a growth in population that is most valued. That economic development would be a highly-valued policy area in this phase seems also logical.
If both people and economic growth is implied in the city-building stage, than an entirely new dimension to community development is opened up. Tourism is people-attraction but citizen-attraction is more than that; citizen-attraction is a Privatist form of community development that directly taps into our driver of ED, population mobility. In any case the pace of western urban growth was both uneven (some cities proved to be population magnets, others not so) and temporally unpredictable. The population path was also distinctive. Los Angeles did not attract the same ethnic and cultural groups as did San Francisco, for example. The diffusion of political culture continued patterns first evidenced in the Midwest and south-central city-building phase. The Great Plains states to Denver almost became a population transshipment point.
In any case, a great deal of this chapter’s discussion has focused more on the city-building phase than on the strategy. The strategy exists and operates within the context and environment of the city-building phase. It is evident there are many kinds of city-builders. An Ogden or Larimer can also be a Union Pacific Railroad—or even a land speculation company. We have attempted to demonstrate how the economy of the “little” city can develop into a more conventional market economy—and in so doing develop the initial jurisdictional economic base. In the case of western cities that meant inviting the firms and capital of the eastern hegemony to “come on in”. Mining/timber companies didn’t waste any time, and so did some branch manufacturing. But mostly consumer-driven service/finance firms settled in to milk new markets. As the early city matures a business community forms, establishes key vehicles such as chambers, and if large enough, a real estate exchange or local trade association/exchange. These groups will inherit dominance from the city-builders, and in the railroad’s case, seek to develop economic autonomy to foster growth and profits. That this business ED involvement, cowboy privatism, has been collapsed into a simple and mindless local hick, greed-based boosterism is unfortunate.
Western city-building overlapped with “New South” city-building, but as described in the last chapter, the latter is not identical to western city-building. The South had existing workforce, raw materials, and plenty of new markets to exploit. The railroads gave it first priority and manufacturing firms of hegemonic Big Cities knew opportunity when they saw it. They would see it in Los Angeles to be sure, but Pacific cities aside, manufacturing dispersion was markedly less in western cities. Texas, dancing to its own more isolated and autonomous geography, evolved more on its own terms. In the South the divided Redeemer policy system and the distinctive political culture, plus being home to 95% of African-Americans created a distinctly different setting than anything found in the Wild West. If anything, the South lost population—the West was “undividedly” in growth mode.
[i] Colorado 1876.The following became states AFTER 1889: North and South Dakota, Montana, Washington (1989), Idaho, Wyoming, Utah (1890), Oklahoma (1907), New Mexico, Arizona (1912) and Alaska, Hawaii (1958).
[ii] Check out Richard Wade, the Urban Frontier (University of Chicago Press, 1959) which covers Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Lexington, Louisville, and St. Louis.
[iii] For a view counter to Barth’s instant cities see Lawrence Larsen and Robert Branyan, “The Development of an Urban Civilization on the Frontier of the American West”, Societas, Volume 1, Winter, 1971, pp. 33-50.
[iv] California in 1890 was 49%, Colorado (45%), Utah and Washington (35%). See Raymond A. Mohl, The New City: Urban America in the Industrial Age 1860-1920, (Arlington Heights Illinois, Harlan Davidson Inc., 1985), Table 2, p. 11; and Oliver Knight, Toward an Understanding of the Western Town“, The Western Historical Quarterly, Volume 4, Number 1 (January 1973), pp. 37-38.
Ron W. Coan 