West, the

A variously defined region in the USA. Today it is generally understood to embrace everything west of the Mississippi River, thus including such distinctive regions as the Great Plains, Mountain States, Pacific Northwest, and Southwest. The Wild West – the proverbially lawless frontier of the 19th century that included many western regions before their incorporation as states of the Union – lay largely in the Great Plains area, from western Kansas to eastern Wyoming.

Historically, the meaning of ‘the West’ has shifted. In the mid-18th century, it lay just west of the Allegheny Mountains, the great barrier separating older settlements on the eastern seaboard from the largely unexplored interior. Eventually much of this territory became known as the Middle West (or Midwest), with the West proper seen as lying beyond the next great mountain barrier, the Rocky Mountains. The term Far West (as distinct from Midwest) has also been used to denote everything from the Rockies west; in some definitions, however, the four states in which the Rockies rise from the Great Plains (New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana) are not included. Taking into account the expanse and changing characteristics of the Great Plains themselves, some observers set the eastern boundary of the West at either 98° west or 100° west (roughly from the eastern or central Dakotas through central Texas). Land west of this line is generally higher and drier than that to the east, and is thus more suited to the traditionally ‘Western’ pursuits of dry farming and stock raising.