During recent years historians and academics have argued frequently over Turner's work; however, all agree that the frontier thesis has had an enormous effect on historical scholarship.

He proved adept at promoting his ideas and his students, for whom he obtained jobs in major universities, including Merle Curti and Marcus Lee Hansen.

He circulated copies of his essays and lectures to important scholars and literary people, published extensively in magazines, recycled favorite material, attaining the largest possible audience for major concepts,[5] and wielded considerable influence within the American Historical Association as an officer and advisor for The American Historical Review.

His emphasis on the importance of the frontier in shaping American character influenced the interpretation found in thousands of scholarly histories.

[9] Turner was never comfortable at Harvard; when he retired in 1922 he became a visiting scholar at the Huntington Library in Los Angeles, where his note cards and files continued to accumulate, although few monographs got published.

[15] As each generation of pioneers relocated 50 to 100 miles west, they abandoned useless European practices, institutions and ideas, and instead found new solutions to new problems created by their new environment.

Over multiple generations, the frontier produced characteristics of informality, violence, crudeness, democracy and initiative that the world recognized as "American".

The new generation stresses gender, ethnicity, professional categorization, and the contrasting victor and victim legacies of manifest destiny and colonial expansion.

Most[citation needed] professional historians operating within the au courant postmodern paradigm now criticize Turner's frontier thesis and the theme of American exceptionalism.

The disunity of the concept of the West and the similarity of American expansion to European colonialism and imperialism during the 19th century, and the lack of complete egalitarianism even on the frontier revealed the limits[clarification needed] of Turnerian and exceptionalist paradigms.

[17] Moos (2002) says that the 1910s to 1940s black filmmaker and novelist Oscar Micheaux incorporated Turner's frontier thesis into his work.

Micheaux promoted the West as a place where blacks could transcend race and earn economic success through diligent work and perseverance.

Disneyland's Frontierland of the late 20th century represented the myth of rugged individualism that celebrated what was perceived to be the American heritage.

The public has ignored academic historians', David J. Weber for example, anti-Turnerian models, largely because they conflict with and often destroy the legends of Western heritage.