Acculturated places Spanish West In 1848, when the U.S. won the Mexican–American War, it gained seven new territories: California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Nevada, and Utah. This was the biggest cause of the Wild West era. When people relocated to the underdeveloped badlands; a pure culture was developed within Western America. Sonora's culture was also acculturated to the Wild West. Canadians On June 13, 1898, the Yukon Territory Act created Yukon as a separate Canadian territory. The trail to its capital, Dawson City, gave prospectors access to gold mines. causing the Klondike Gold Rush. The Klondike Trail was a dangerous place; many wild animals attacked the prospectors, and contagious diseases spread throughout the trail. In total, over 1,000 died on the trail from various causes. American frontier in popular culture The exploration, settlement, exploitation, and conflicts of the "American Old West" form a unique tapestry of events, which has been celebrated by Americans and foreigners alike—in art, music, dance, novels, magazines, short stories, poetry, theater, video games, movies, radio, television, song, and oral tradition—which continues in the modern era. Beth E. Levy argues that the physical and mythological west inspired composers Aaron Copland, Roy Harris, Virgil Thomson, Charles Wakefield Cadman, and Arthur Farwell. Religious themes have inspired many environmentalists as they contemplate the pristine West before the frontiersmen violated its spirituality. Actually, as a historian William Cronon has demonstrated, the concept of "wilderness" was highly negative and the antithesis of religiosity before the romantic movement of the 19th century. The Frontier Thesis of historian Frederick Jackson Turner, proclaimed in 1893, established the main lines of historiography which fashioned scholarship for three or four generations and appeared in the textbooks used by practically all American students. Popularizing Western lore The mythologizing of the West began with minstrel shows and popular music in the 1840s. During the same period, P. T. Barnum presented Native chiefs, dances, and other Wild West exhibits in his museums. However, large scale awareness took off when the dime novel appeared in 1859, the first being Malaeska, the Indian Wife of the White Hunter. By simplifying reality and grossly exaggerating the truth, the novels captured the public's attention with sensational tales of violence and heroism and fixed in the public's mind stereotypical images of heroes and villains—courageous cowboys and savage Natives, virtuous lawmen and ruthless outlaws, brave settlers and predatory cattlemen. Millions of copies and thousands of