The American Southwest: An Urban View

Abstract

and books have called attention to the urban dimension of the western experience, and urban dwellers have been given as much credit for developing the American as other pioneers and promoters.1 From the beginning, western cities served as spearheads of the American frontier. Urban developers worked to reproduce familiar city patterns in the new country, and by 1830 Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, and St. Louis represented the paramount influence in the Ohio Valley. A similar process occurred in the Great Lakes area. The builders of Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, and Milwaukee, like earlier urban pioneers and promoters, were a conspicuous part of the westward movement. By 1870 the lake cities exhibited the same dominant influence over their region that older urban centers exerted over their respective hinterlands, and this rapid city growth in the was viewed as fundamental to the development of the expanding nation.2 In Texas, too, patterns of urbanization were established during the middle years of the nineteenth century. During the period from 1836 to 1865, Houston, Galveston, Austin, and San Antonio came of age as major centers of cultural, social, economic, and political influence in the state. Texans looked to the cities not only for culture but for vital services. As one urban historian has put it, They read urban newspapers, sought out urban society, borrowed money, traded raw materials and purchased goods from urban merchants.3 Even the Rocky Mountain mining camps and the Kansas cattle towns served as agents of urban civilization, despite the myth of the Wild West