While the western frontiers were expanding and America was adding hundreds of square miles to its borders, the rest of the country was in a different state of change and progress. The more established regions of the eastern United States contrasted sharply with the situation in the Southwest, where American culture was still in its infancy.

Back east, the Industrial Revolution was getting underway and populations were growing quickly. Overcrowding, poverty, and poor working conditions were motivating some people to head out west. The concept of manifest destiny was spreading rapidly, luring people to the open frontier in hopes of better futures.

Illustration of a mechanical reaper

In America's growing heartland, the present-day Midwest, new advancements in farming techniques were expanding agricultural economies. The cotton gin and a grain harvesting implement called the mechanical reaper catapulted America into a new status as an international agricultural leader.

Illustration of New York City in 1850

In the cities of the northeastern United States, large-scale manufacturing brought factories to these areas. Improvements in transportation, including steamboats and steam-powered railways, led to massive economic expansion as shipping was now much faster. Developments in printing brought daily newspapers to the masses, and politics and social reform took center stage.

Group of Italian Americans in New York City

In stark contrast was the westward frontier, still a place of vast, open possibility. The unsettled areas were places for rugged individualism. People immigrated to the eastern United States in cultural and religious groups—Polish, German, Italian, and so on—and settled in like-minded communities as well. However, those traveling west largely went alone or in small groups of families. The westward-looking pioneers had to reinvent what it meant to be American. In the Southwest, it meant adapting to a harsh environment and also learning from and merging with existing native and Hispanic cultures.

As a region still under colonization in the 1800s, the Southwest was strikingly different from the already populated and civilized East. Many settlers sought to bring their literature, art, and music as well as other elements of higher culture out west. But the cultural clash with native and Hispanic people and the unique geography altered the look of those institutions in these new lands. A new culture of creative expression that combined the old with the new unfolded, adding to the unique flavor of the Southwest.