Social science research challenges the conventional wisdom that the American frontier provided migrants with unusual levels of socioeconomic opportunity. Given complex spatial and socioeconomic patterns in the distribution of rewards, the factors that drove the population of frontiers and shaped resource extraction strategies are unclear. This dissertation uses an evolutionary perspective to investigate factors that inspired migration to and silver prospecting strategies in late 19^th Century Gothic, Colorado. Given high migration costs and uncertain benefits, individuals should only migrate if they lacked access to sufficient resources and status. Longitudinal data suggest that the population of Gothic prospectors is drawn primarily from poor families with high intra-familial competition. However, migrants came from a wider range of socio-economic groups than predicted, possibly lured by the romance and potential high yields of the mining boom. Once in Gothic, prospectors should search for silver ore in groups that optimized per capita yields for group members, but social constraints also tend to affect group formation. Data from mining claim certificates demonstrate that characteristics of individual members such as kinship, access to capital, and perhaps trust appear to be important for determining group formation. If prospectors hoped to make a profit, mining claims should be located where costs of shipping do not exceed the value of a load of ore. However, prospectors located mines too far from Gothic to be profitable. Rather, prospectors appeared to make decisions about where to locate claims based on the concentration of silver in local ore found in newspaper propaganda. This project demonstrates how individuals select economic strategies under conditions of high risk and uncertainty, and is a piece of the puzzle for understanding development on edges of expanding populations. An evolutionary perspective advances previous research by drawing attention to the importance of how an individual acquires information as well as and how incentives of lifetime fitness as well as profit shape how individuals select economic strategies.