FLIMFLAM FRONTIER: Submarginal Land Development in Utah
BY C A R L T O N F . C U L M S E E
We invest the Frontier with robes of majesty. A leading interpreter of it terms it one of the "two grand themes of American history." Historians have analyzed it as a human tsunami rolling inexorably into the sunset. The mural painters have pictured it led by heroes many times lifesize, supermen in coonskin caps and fringed buckskins — giants in the earth with vision in their eyes. Without discrediting those images, may I mention a frontier figure ignored more often than his influence justifies? That person is the Promoter, the gentleman who sells golden dreams for a fast buck. He does not always make it but he tries. Captain John Smith's promotional effusions even survive in college literature anthologies. The Jamestown and Plymouth colonies, first in Anglo-America, were promotions by commercial companies. The salesman, the advertiser, the boomer who was touched with foresight of a splendid future, and the chap who was little better than a bunco artist — all these types helped roll the tide of empire toward the Pacific. So let us briefly examine some trends and techniques among frontier boomers. One striking fact is that these pioneers' slogans promised more as the lands became less promising. (There ought to be an economic law for this: the ardor of adjectives warms in inverse proportion to the attractiveness of the real estate being sold; or some such phrasing.) When the Promoter faced the problem of selling lands in the zone of chronic drought along the 98th meridian down the middle of the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, and on south, he became more than eloquent; he grew scriptural. The prairies had been "cleared of trees by the hand of God." There were no forests to fell and burn, no stumps to pull. (And precious little rainfall in the dry phase of the precipitation cycle fell on these lands.) Dr. Culmsee is the dean of the College of Humanities and Arts, U t a h State University Logan, Utah. "
