More than 150 years after the pioneers saddled their horses and sharpened their pickaxes for the frontier, the land of the American West is being rushed again—but this time it’s not for gold (or Manifest Destiny). After Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) announced in late June federal initiatives to accelerate the development of solar power on Western public lands. Under review are 676,048 acres of land managed by the Bureau of Land Management—a Department of the Interior agency—and located in New Mexico, California, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada and Utah. Salazar said he expected the new measures to hasten 13 commercial-scale solar plants into construction by the end of next year, creating 50,000 jobs.

One such initiative will designate 24 tracts of land “solar energy study areas,” which will be evaluated for their “environmental and resource suitability for large-scale solar energy production,” according to the DOI press release. It is a zoning measure whose goal is to “[allow for] a more efficient process for permitting and siting responsible solar development,” and, backed by the Obama Administration, is set to develop what Salazar calls a new “engine for the clean-energy economy.”

Support for the program has been fairly strong among environmentalists and industry observers alike—a consensus that seems to be growing rarer as renewable energy gains traction—but, as is nearly inevitable with any behemoth federal project, green-minded voices have been raised in concern. More than half of the designated 676,048 acres lie in California’s Mojave Desert region, an undeveloped swath of land that may be inhospitable to humans but is the habitat of creatures like the endangered desert tortoise, which the U.S. spent $100 million to save over the past ten years.

Even with the careful siting of solar arrays, “there are going to be conflicts with endangered species,” said Ileene Anderson, director of the public lands desert program for the Center for Biological Diversity.

Should development carry through as planned, the DOI estimates that its “solar energy study areas” have the potential to support 100,000 MW of solar-power capacity, enough power to keep hundreds of millions of homes running. The solar hotspot potential of this western frontier, however, has been evident for a while—most of the best spots were snapped up by enterprising solar developers over the past two years, and the BLM is already reviewing 158 lease applications for solar projects covering 1.8 million acres. Still, it will likely be years before we lay eyes on a sun-powered Utopia rising from desert sands—the DOI doesn’t expect to finish evaluating the solar zones until 2010.

Regardless of which side of the renewable energy fence you sit on, I think we can agree on one thing: measures like these are yet another reminder of how far solar power has come over the past couple of years. Although it still has a ways to go before reaching grid parity, solar power is moving toward the finish line day by day, week by week. Whether you’re installing solar panels in Vermont or designing a solar thermal plant in New Mexico, you’ve added an indispensable step along the way.