Excerpt from The American Settler's Guide: A Popular Exposition of the Public Land System of the United States of America

Published in 1892

The frontier was the wilderness beyond the borders of civilized towns, a mysterious region that offered people the opportunity to strike out on their own, to make their own successes. For European immigrants, the American frontier offered a dream never before imagined. In Europe, a serf could never think of leaving his allotted plot of land to rise from poverty; a shopkeeper's son could never hope to run his own store before his father's death. Yet...