Several episodes of this PBS series deal with the West. "Battle for the Wilderness" explores the Hetch Hetchy controversy. "The Way West" offers a six-hour look at expansion from the gold rush to Wounded Knee. In "The White Man's Image," explore the educational missions aimed at "civilizing" Native Americans in the last decades of the 19th century.

This eight-part PBS series breaks from the linear narrative of continental conquest by telling the story of the West as a series of biographies. Another Ken Burns project, the series combines images, source readings, and historian interviews. Plus, there's a useful companion site.

This tale of an immigrant's experience in late-19th-century America climaxes in the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1983. The real story of western migration is far more complex than this romantic narrative suggests, but it probably worked out this way for somebody.

This 1953 classic offers a Frederick Jackson Turner-like account of the evolution of the West, from Native Americans to frontiersmen to ranchers to farmers. Filled with archetypal imagery, the film can be read as a simple story of historical progress. But the film also raises a more complex set of questions about the role, or romantically imagined role, of "the gun" in winning the West.