And now it has 500,000. That big boom in population would be the same for Tucson, Phoenix, San Diego, and Seattle. Now Las Vegas is really the growth spot. In 1900 California was an urban state, meaning that more than 50 percent of the residents lived in incorporated areas of 2,500 and higher population. The United States as a whole was not urban until 1920.
People often imagine the West as an open and individualistic frontier.
A lot of western historians say that's an old-fashioned idea, more myth than reality. But it is at least part of the American intellectual landscape. In fact, the West is a series of urban oases, meaning that we live in urban centers, but we have all that open space in between. Though the West is urban, the open spaces have created a sense of isolation and distance, especially in the first half of the twentieth century and in more agricultural areas, like Nebraska, Kansas, and the Dakotas. Those areas had small populations and few large churches, and it was difficult for them to get pastors.