BOB MCCRACKEN Nye County History B.L. McLaughlin / Special to the PVT A spacious landscape and wild horses are emblematic of the western Frontier that has for more than a century affected Nevada's development. Advertisement

I have long been fascinated by America's Western frontier.

I think our frontier past is key to understanding who we are; it has shaped us as a people. In a real and profound sense, we are the children of the frontier; the Western frontier is the great legacy we have inherited.

The better we understand the frontier, the more we understand ourselves and effectively chart our future as individuals and as communities.

Recently a former college professor of mine, the psychologist O.J. Harvey celebrated his 80th birthday. To honor the occasion, family members, friends, and former students came together to thank him for being part of their lives.

Among those present was Carlos Obregón, a Mexican economist who flew in from Mexico City just for the affair.

Carlos studied with O.J. in the 1970s; over the years, I had often heard O.J. speak of Carlos and we had met a time or two, but our contacts had been brief. At the gathering, I had a chance to talk with Carlos about his current work. It turns out he is also very interested in the frontier; I would like to share a few of his ideas with you.

First, Carlos' credentials: He took his Ph.D. in economics under the internationally recognized economist Kenneth Boulding, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in economics at Harvard University, and then a position as a visiting scholar under Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Samuelson at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Later, he was head of the department of international investments for a world-class bank, and as part of his responsibilities, he visited 100 of the world's major cities each year for several years. He is widely read in world history and has just completed a book titled "Civilization and Development," which will be published in Mexico in December. He says his book is very much about the frontier.

Carlos believes, more than anything else, that the presence of the frontier characterizes our American culture. In no other country, he says, did a rich frontier culture develop -- not in Canada, Brazil, Argentina or Australia, the other leading contenders.

The frontier in full form is, thus, uniquely American.

Three things are needed for a frontier to develop, Carlos believes. First, you need an environment with large potential for economic development; in the case of the United States, it was a huge continent stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Second, there has to be the capacity to take advantage of that potential, including the availability of the proper technology and sufficient numbers of people with the right attitudes and education to get the job done. In the United States, this requirement was fulfilled by immigrants from England, which had given birth to the Industrial Revolution and was using this continent as its frontier. And third, a visible history of success is required.

With the United States, Carlos says, a huge geography beckoned. It lent a vision, and the vision was not a dream; it was supported by material reality.

People saw others make their visions come true and believed they could do the same. Thus, the frontier was born, and with it a new value system and a new attitude toward life unlike any seen before.

Call it the spirit of the frontier.

Carlos believes the American frontier created a new culture in world history, one with some very special characteristics (I am abstracting a bit here from what Carlos told me):

A view -- perhaps the most important value to come from the frontier -- that people can freely acquire what they want by going out and taking a risk without having a social structure (i.e., society) in some way impose old customs on them, as was the case in all societies, really, until the founding of America

A belief that it is often better to move than to stay put -- opportunity is to be found by moving, in most cases, to the West -- "The West is the best," to quote Jim Morrison

A willingness to accept the new, a belief that new ways of looking at and doing things can be good

A belief that the boundaries of society should be fluid -- people didn't have to remain in the social class into which they were born, in sharp contrast again, to virtually every society in the world before the development of the United States

A can-do attitude where so much is seen as possible, in contrast to, "Oh, that can't be done"

A great geography that led to a welcoming and openness toward newcomers, perhaps more than had existed previously anywhere in the world

A desire, even a thirst, for self-improvement, a need to rise above one's beginnings, however humble

A high value placed on education for all, which was seen as a primary means of self-improvement and the betterment of society

And an optimism regarding life's possibilities and the future, a belief that the future will be better than the present.

The frontier was present at the founding of the United States. However, in my view -- and I recognize that others, perhaps even Carlos, may disagree with me -- the frontier and its values as detailed above did not come into full flower right away.

Colonial society had its share of constraints and the culture that evolved in the South could be quite closed for most. Slavery and indentured servitude, which were widespread in the United States early on, are incompatible with the frontier.

Southern slaveholders, for example, sometimes tried to use their slaves in the first years of the California goldfields but were openly rebuked.

The fullest expression of the frontier in the United States, I believe, was in the West. I'll even include the farm states in the Midwest as part of America's Western frontier, but its real heart was in the far West, from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean.

It was James Marshall's discovery of gold at Sutter's Fort near Sacramento, Calif., in 1848 that ushered in the Western frontier, where the nine values of the frontier listed above became most fully expressed. As I have on previous occasions noted in this column, the Western frontier received its last full expression on the desert of Central Nevada, beginning with Jim Butler's discovery of silver in Tonopah in 1900.

And make no mistake about it -- as Carlos suggests, the frontier and its values still characterize Americans. The frontier is very much present in Nye County, and we still have our huge geography.

In general, however, the opportunities the frontier offers are shifting from physical geographical resources to what might be called the worldwide economic and social geography -- the endless frontier.

The frontier has changed; it still exists, but its boundaries, Carlos suggests, are no longer a matter of geography. The frontier values passed down to us in Nye County by the likes of Margaret and Joseph Yount, Elmer Bowman, Hank Records, Shorty Harris, Jim Butler, Ike Irwin, John Humphrey and Lewis Gordon will carry us to our future.

When you think about Nye County and its history, the spirit of the Western frontier has been here from the 1860s on. It flowered wonderfully for a generation or more beginning in 1900.

The spirit remains -- and you know what? I'd bet the ranch that it's getting ready to bloom again.

And it's going to be something to see.