音频游览 Gallery 4

As territorial expansion became the major focus of the United States, obsession with the western-most regions of the country peaked. Expeditions sponsored by the U.S. government and railroad companies included artists and writers who fed the public's appetite for stories and images of the frontier. They succeeded in "selling" the West to the public: Over 350,000 settlers pushed westward between 1841 and 1865 to take advantage of the seemingly inexhaustible natural resources pictured and described in the popular press. Between 1870 and 1900 Americans settled more land than they had during the previous three centuries.

But the voices of dissent began to grow louder as the century progressed. Disenchantment with industrialization in the East made larger numbers of people question the policy of unencumbered growth and its effect on an increasingly ravaged American landscape. President Lincoln's designation of Yellowstone as a state park to save it from development became the early blueprint for the National Park system. The images created by Bierstadt, Moran, Watkins, Jackson and others, first used to promote settlement and commerce, now helped elevate specific wilderness areas to national icons deserving of preservation.