A closer look
American Progress
How did John Gast’s 1872 painting, which was widely disseminated as a commercial color print, convey a range of ideas about the frontier?
by Ellen Noonan, New York University, and Martha Sandweiss, Princeton University
American Progress was painted by Brooklyn artist John Gast in 1872, but it was actually two technological developments and one man, George Crofutt, that made this iconic, romanticized image of white western settlement possible. Crofutt was a Connecticut native who had gone to Colorado in 1860 seeking gold and, failing to find any, instead spent most of the 1860s hauling freight across the West. The completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 opened the American West to settlers from the East, all manner of business opportunities, and tourists, and Crofutt saw an opportunity. When he returned to the east coast, he put his knowledge of the West to work and began publishing guidebooks that promoted a romantic vision of the region’s beauty and potential for tourists and prospective settlers alike. In 1871 he began publishing a monthly illustrated newspaper called Crofutt's Western World, which cost one dollar per year and boasted more than four thousand subscribers.
The mid-1860s also witnessed the development of chromolithography, a printing process that made it possible for publishers to produce relatively inexpensive full-color illustrations. Many Americans bought chromolithographs to decorate their homes, and advertisers also seized on the new medium. In 1872, Crofutt commissioned Gast to create the painting on which a color chromolithograph could be based; he provided Gast with the title and specific instructions about what scenic elements to include. Crofutt offered the nineteen-color print to Crofutt’s Western World subscribers for an additional fifty cents over the regular subscription cost. While it is impossible to know how many American Progress prints Crofutt sold, it is known that he thought the image was so effective that he also used a black-and-white version as a regular cover-page illustration in his other publication, Crofutt’s Trans-Continental Tourist’s Guide, and in most of his later guidebooks.
Although the painting and print do not convey a realistic representation of actual events, they nonetheless express a powerful historical idea about the meaning of America’s westward expansion. The image presents a kind of historical encyclopedia of transportation technologies. The simple Native American travois precedes the covered wagon and the Pony Express, the overland stage, and the three railroad lines. The image thus conveys a vivid sense of the passage of time as well as of the inevitability of technological progress. The groups of human figures, read from left to right, convey much the same idea. Native Americans precede Euro-American prospectors, who in turn come before the farmers and settlers. The idea of progress coming from the East to the West, and the notion that the frontier would be developed by sequential waves of people was deeply rooted in American thought.
Then, of course, there is that “beautiful and charming female,” as Crofutt described her, whose diaphanous gown somehow remains attached to her body without the aid of Velcro or safety pins. On her head she bears what Crofutt called “the Star of Empire.” And lest viewers still not understand her role in this vision of American destiny, he explains: “In her right hand she carries a book—common school—the emblem of education and the testimonial of our national enlightenment, while with the left hand she unfolds and stretches the slender wires of the telegraph, that are to flash intelligence throughout the land.” Native Americans flee from progress, unable to adjust to the shifting tides of history. American Progress demonstrates the power of nineteenth-century visual media to engage large historical questions, cultural stereotypes, and political ideas, by using a visual vocabulary that viewers found both familiar and persuasive.