Frontier life: everything you wanted to know

Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine. What was life like on the frontier in 19th century America? What perils awaited those who travelled on wagon trains across plains and mountains to forge new lives? What did these waves of migration mean for the people who already lived in those places? And how lawless were the new towns that sprung up?

Well, in this episode, Karen Jones, professor of environmental and cultural history at the University of Kent, introduces us to Life on the Frontier. She was speaking to Eleanor Evans. Karen, thank you so much for your time in joining us on today's History Extra podcast. Oh, thanks very much for inviting me. It's really good to have a chat about the West.

Always happy to talk about the frontier. It seems like such a time in history where people seem to have really vivid images in mind to draw on. And I, you know, grew up watching reruns of of uh Little House on the Prairie and other people draw on so many different images and representations of this place. So we're going to be going into a lot of the mythology around this and what life was really like.

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