building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici

Manifest Destiny began the period of the West, but it also highlighted its
ephemeral, transitory side. These years blew out the pioneer’s flame of hope of
finding redemption in the wild life and inaugurated the work of the cowboy in
territories where agriculture was impossible due to adverse weather conditions.
The Mormons’ dream of founding their own nation, named Desert, also had to
make way for the political drive for expansion. The call of nature conjured up by
Thoreau, Whitman and Emerson combined with the complex ideology of the
frontier, until it all merged with the adventurous romanticism of the cowboy, who
with his herds followed in the opposite direction to the advance of colonisation.
The cattle trails, such as the Goodnight‐Loving Trail (1866), named after two
adventurers and cattle owners, closed the era of Manifest Destiny. They retraced
their steps to sell their animals. Thousands of Texas Longhorns roamed the
territories, which had so far been the domain of wild animals, so that the plains
became a huge ranch without borders. A different landscape had by now replaced a
world, which was just as precarious as that of the first settlers as they pushed
westwards.
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