The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896 (Oxford History of the United States)

by Richard White

Americans mythologized the movement of population onto uncultivated lands as quintessentially American. The number of people going into the cities, however, far exceeded the pioneers near or beyond the 100th meridian. The urban immigrants were creating the American future. In 1890 the collective population of Chicago, New York, and Brooklyn exceeded the 2.8 million people who lived in the states and territories lying wholly west of the 100th meridian, and even then, the Far West was increasingly urban. A quarter of California’s population lived in San Francisco in 1890. Subtract San Francisco’s population from the West’s total, and New York and Brooklyn alone came within a couple hundred thousand people of the population of the Rocky Mountains, Southwest, and Pacific Coast combined.9