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Excerpt from The American Settler's Guide: A Popular Exposition of the Public Land System of the United States of America

Published in 1892

The frontier was the wilderness beyond the borders of civilized towns, a mysterious region that offered people the opportunity to strike out on their own, to make their own successes. For European immigrants, the American frontier offered a dream never before imagined. In Europe, a serf could never think of leaving his allotted plot of land to rise from poverty; a shopkeeper's son could never hope to run his own store before his father's death. Yet in America, just outside of the newly formed towns, hardy souls could determine their own destiny in the unknown.

Securing Property

On the American frontier, as in few other places on earth, a man amounted to the sum of his skills and...