Community in the American West

FAIN: FA-11520-76

Robert V. Hine
Regents of the University of California, Riverside (Riverside, CA 92521-0001)

To assess the influence of the American frontier on community ties (including wagon trains, Mexican ranchos, mining camps, cowboys on the trail, farmers at beesor camp meetings, and Western small town life.) Grantee will project the relationship of the frontier into a comparison with the modern commune movement. Grantee believes the contemporary commune is another expression of the quest for community. Communes today often use pioneering images, suggesting the extent to which these groups are rooted in the historical communitarianism of the frontier.