First Frontier Inc. was established as a non-profit organization based out of Xenia, Ohio in 1977. With aid from the Institute of Outdoor Drama in North Carolina, First Frontier Inc. sought to develop an outdoor drama based on history relevant to Xenia and the Greene County area. The concept of was to be based on the play Tecumseh!, which was already being produced near Chillicothe, Ohio. During this time period, attendance to outdoor dramas was the highest it had been in decades. A great deal of research and planning was completed by First Frontier Inc. and its sponsoring organization in order to ensure that a viable plan was laid out.
Blue Jacket was an eighteenth-century Shawnee war chief who led the effort to preserve the tribe's land rights in Ohio Country during and after the Revolutionary War. W. L. Mundell wrote the script based on the twentieth-century historical novels written by Allan W Eckert. The production portrayed Blue Jacket as Marmaduke Van Swearingen, a white man raised as Shawnee. This is the version of Blue Jacket's life that Eckert popularized in his novels. Historical research and DNA testing has provided evidence that Blue Jacket could not have been Van Swearingen. Current scholarship indicates that the war chief was Shawnee by birth.
Although Blue Jacket Outdoor Drama was not the only play produced by First Frontier, it was their premiere production for almost thirty years. The first performance of Blue Jacket was held in 1982, and the play was financially viable up until the late 1990s. By its twenty year anniversary, over one million people had seen the play, and it was a major tourist attraction for Xenia and Greene County. However, in the early 2000s, a sharp drop in attendance was observed in outdoor dramas across the country, and Blue Jacket was no exception. By 2003, First Frontier Inc. was clearly running in the red.
A number of attempts were made to keep First Frontier Inc. operational. The company aggressively sought outside funding in the forms of grants and was active in its capital efforts. However, the deficit the company was running proved to be too much to overcome. First Frontier Inc. put on the last production of Blue Jacket in 2007. During the year of 2008, production of the play had stopped while First Frontier frantically searched for alternative sources of revenue, or a new production based on a new script. In 2009, First Frontier ceased all operations and filed for bankruptcy.
From the guide to the Blue Jacket Outdoor Drama, 1974-2010, (Wright State University, Special Collections and Archives)
