Most Americans learn about the pioneers and the Oregon Trail at a young age; some even played the classic video game ("You have died of dysentary"). And their understanding of the Western half of the United States is that pioneers settled, farmed, mined, logged or whatever and later the territories became states, and the states chugged along until today, filled with little towns and old homesteading land or something like that.

According to Carl Abbott, a professor of urban More...