The American west was composed of diverse communities. There was no distinctive or uniform model, such as hypothesised by Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893. Migrants' confrontation with nature did not strip them of their cultural inheritance and produce new people and societies of a specifically western character or with other distinctive traits. Migrants retained many of their traditional values and adapted many of their institutions at the same time as adjusting to the natural environment and adopting some of the manners and mores of whoever was in authority. The result was a proliferation of small communities that existed like island archipelagos, sometimes coexisting within a defined geographical space, yet distinctly separate.

These western communities had porous boundaries and were both geographically and chronologically transient. Some merged into each other for geographical reasons, as when immigrants moved to a new area or an already settled area and accommodated to their neighbours' economic lifestyles, if not their cultural values. Others changed gradually over time as newcomers adjusted both to their natural and socio-cultural environments and took advantages of changes in technology. The communities were both rural and urban, immigrant and native, religious and secular, voluntary and organised.

Drawing a snapshot picture at any given point in time does not reflect how many differences existed. More appropriate both to actual experiences and to recent historical concerns to reflect multiplicity and complexity is a depiction of small clusters of family and friends, ethnic communities, organised bodies and economic interest groups.