- Los Angeles steals its water supply, millions of Mexicans migrate north, and Hollywood begins to shape the West and the nation's image of it.
- In 1893, the 400th anniversary of Columbus's arrival in the New World was celebrated in Chicago. It was called The World's Columbian Exposition, and it was so large, so ambitious, so self-congratulatory, that it took an extra year just to get everything ready. Twenty-four million people paid their way into the fair, more than had ever attended any other event in the history of the world. All the western states struggled to outshine one another -- including the brand-new states of North and South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and Washington. The California pavilion was shaped like a Spanish mission. On display inside were a goddess made entirely of figs and a conquistador built of prunes. For its exhibit hall, Montana reconstructed a mountain man's cabin. Kansas showed off a gigantic mural made of grain, and an entire herd of buffalo -- stuffed. In a speech given at the fair, a young, unknown historian named Frederick Jackson Turner declared for the first time that the frontier had finally closed. There were 63 million Americans in 1893. Seventeen million of them now lived west of the Mississippi. Only 90 years earlier, when Thomas Jefferson purchased the Louisiana Territory, he had estimated it would take a hundred generations for the United States to people the West. Americans had done it in less than five. But beyond the fairgrounds, beyond Chicago, in the real West, for every story that was coming to an end, another was about to begin.—PBS
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