You’ve seen the painting. You know the one—a glowing, angelic woman floats over the plains, telegraph wire in hand, as covered wagons and trains push toward the sunset. It’s called American Progress by John Gast. Honestly, it’s basically the "greatest hit" of images of westward expansion. But here is the thing: it was painted in 1872 in Brooklyn. Gast never even went out West.
History is messy.
Most people think of the 19th-century American West through a very specific lens of sepia-toned bravery and rugged landscapes. We have these mental snapshots of dusty cowboys and stoic pioneers. But those images weren't just "capturing" history as it happened. They were often carefully staged, heavily edited, or flat-out propaganda designed to convince people back East (and in Europe) that the West was a vacant paradise just waiting to be claimed. It wasn't vacant.
The Myth of the Empty Land
If you look at early images of westward expansion, specifically the landscape photography of the 1860s and 70s, you’ll notice something weird. There are almost no people in them. This wasn't an accident.
Carleton Watkins is a name you should know if you care about this stuff. He lugged a massive "mammoth plate" camera into Yosemite Valley long before it was a National Park. His photos are stunning. They show massive granite cliffs and mirroring lakes with zero signs of human life. At the time, these images were used to justify the idea of "Manifest Destiny"—the belief that white settlers were divinely ordained to expand across the continent. By framing the West as a pristine, "untouched" wilderness, photographers like Watkins helped erase the fact that Indigenous peoples had lived there for thousands of years.
💡 You might also like: How Late is McDonald's Open on Christmas Eve? What You Need to Know Before You Drive
It was a branding exercise.
Think about the technical constraints for a second. Early photography required long exposure times. If something moved, it blurred. So, if a group of people were living their lives in the background of a shot, a photographer might just wait for them to leave or tell them to get out of the frame to get that "perfect" still shot. This created a visual record that suggested the land was a blank slate. It was an intentional choice that shaped how the entire world saw America.
Painting the Dream (Before Cameras Took Over)
Before the camera became portable enough for the trail, painters were the ones calling the shots. They were the original influencers. Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran are the heavyweights here.
Bierstadt’s paintings are huge. They’re operatic. He’d take sketches from his travels and then go back to his studio to crank the "epic" dial up to eleven. He would literally make mountains taller than they actually were. He’d add golden light that doesn't exist in nature. Why? Because these paintings were being sold to wealthy investors and politicians.
- The Hudson River School style: This influenced how the West was depicted, focusing on the sublime and the terrifying beauty of nature.
- Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak (1863): This is one of Bierstadt's most famous works. It shows a peaceful Native American camp in the foreground with jagged, impossible mountains behind them. It sold for $25,000 at the time—an insane amount of money back then.
- Congressional Impact: Thomas Moran’s watercolors of Yellowstone were actually used as evidence in Congress to pass the bill that made Yellowstone the first National Park in 1872.
Images weren't just art. They were political tools.
The Reality of the "Dirty" West
Then there’s the stuff the postcards didn't show. If you dig into the archives of the Library of Congress or the National Archives, you find a different set of images of westward expansion.
You find photos of "Soddy" houses. Since there were no trees on the Great Plains, families literally lived in huts made of dirt and grass. There’s a famous photo of the Shores family in Nebraska—a Black family of homesteaders standing proudly in front of their sod house. It’s a stark contrast to the "civilized" imagery usually promoted. It shows the grit. It shows the bugs, the mud, and the sheer exhaustion of trying to farm land that didn't want to be farmed.
💡 You might also like: Converting 9 pm eastern time to ist: Why Your Schedule Always Feels Messy
We also have to talk about the daguerreotypes of the Gold Rush. These weren't grand landscapes. They were small, intimate portraits of men who looked like they hadn't bathed in three months. Because they hadn't. These photos were often sent back home to families as proof that the father or son was still alive. They’re some of the most honest images we have from the era. No filters. Just dirt.
Moving Pictures and the Death of the Real West
By the late 1800s, the "frontier" was officially declared closed by the U.S. Census Bureau. That’s exactly when the myth-making went into overdrive.
Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show started touring, and they used photography and lithograph posters to sell a version of the West that was already dying. They turned conflict into a circus. They hired real people—like Sitting Bull—to appear in the show, effectively turning living history into a staged performance for a paying audience.
When you look at promotional images of westward expansion from this period, you’re looking at the birth of the Western genre. The "cowboy" was being romanticized into a lone hero. In reality, about one in four cowboys was Black, and many others were Mexican vaqueros. But the popular images of the time began to whiten the narrative, focusing on a specific type of rugged American individualism that suited the national mood.
Why the "Faked" Images Still Matter
So, if so many of these images were staged or exaggerated, why do we still look at them?
Because they tell us more about the aspirations of the United States than the reality. A photo of a steam engine chugging through a mountain pass isn't just a photo of a train; it’s a photo of the 19th-century obsession with technology and conquest. A painting of a sunset over the Pacific isn't just a landscape; it’s a victory lap.
We have to read these images like detectives. You have to look at what is not in the frame.
🔗 Read more: Porn for Women Men and the Ethics of Who is Actually Watching What
- Look for the shadows: Who is missing? Indigenous tribes, Chinese railroad workers, and women are often sidelined or depicted as background characters in the "official" visual history.
- Check the date: Was the image made during the event, or twenty years later when the artist was feeling nostalgic?
- Follow the money: Who paid for the painting or the photo expedition? Often, it was a railroad company or the government.
How to Find Authentic Visual History
If you want to see the real West—the one that isn't just propaganda—you need to look past the famous oil paintings.
Start with the Solomon D. Butcher collection. He was a photographer who spent decades capturing the everyday lives of settlers in Nebraska. His photos are awkward. People stand in front of their houses with all their most prized possessions—sometimes a single cow or a sewing machine—dragged out into the yard. It’s weird, it’s human, and it’s real.
Another essential source is the work of Edward Curtis. Now, Curtis is controversial. He spent decades photographing Native American tribes, but he was known to bring props with him. He’d sometimes ask people to remove modern items like clocks or wagons from the shot because he wanted them to look "authentic" and "untouched" by the modern world. Even his work, which is some of the most famous imagery we have, is a mix of genuine documentation and artistic intervention.
Actionable Insights for History Buffs
To truly understand the visual record of this era, you have to be an active viewer. Don't just scroll.
- Visit the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA): Search for "Homesteading" or "Transcontinental Railroad." You’ll see the raw, unedited photos that didn't make it into the textbooks.
- Compare and Contrast: Find a painting of a specific location (like the Sierras) and then find a modern photo of it. See how much the painter exaggerated the height or the drama.
- Research the Labor: When you see an image of the railroad, look for the workers. Most "official" photos of the Golden Spike ceremony in 1869 famously excluded the Chinese laborers who did the majority of the backbreaking work. Finding the rare photos that do include them changes the entire story.
The history of the West isn't just what happened; it's how we were told it happened. By looking closely at these images, you start to see the difference between the legend and the life. It's much more interesting to see the dirt under the fingernails than the golden light on the hills.
The next time you see a classic image of a wagon train, remember that someone chose that angle. Someone decided what to leave out. The real West was louder, more diverse, and much more complicated than a single frame can ever hold.
Go look at the Butcher collection. See the dirt houses. That's where the real story lives.