Chapter 5 Part 3
Settling the West
Homesteaders
Railroads
Government Policy
Problems
New Technology
Took 250 Years
• For Europeans and Americans to settle up
to the Mississippi River
• Took only 30 years to settle to the Pacific
• Due to Railroads and Government land
and Indian policy
Railroads
• The government wanted to connect up the
country with the railroad
• Encouraged RR companies with 170
million acres of free land
• And with ½ Billion Dollars!
The Pacific Railway Act
• In 1850 set the precedent for giving land
grants to railroads
• Fear that the RRs would just turn around
and resell the land so…
• Land was given in narrow strips in a
checkerboard patten next to other narrow
strips of government land
RRs were given
• 5 square miles of land per mile of track
laid
• Most given to the largest RR companies:
• The Union Pacific and the Central Pacific
were among them
The Trannscontinental RR
• Central Pacific built from Sacramento, Ca.
to the East
• Union Pacific went from Omaha, Neraska
to the West
• They met in 1869 in Promontary Point,
Utah
Within 15 Years
• There were 5 transcontinental RRs
RRs were built by
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Chinese immigrants
Irish
Mexicans
Native Americans
• The Anson-Burlingame Treaty (1868) with
China. To speed up the Chinese
immigration!
Government Policy
• Land Acts:
• The Homestead Acr (1862) gave 160
acres of free land to American citizens or
porspective American citizens
• ONLY 160 acres!
The Homestead Act
• Over 600,000 folks took advantage of the
Homestead Act
• But Fraud by Lumber companies and land
speculators and RRs
• Only 10% ended up with settlers
Other Land Acts for Settlers
• The Timber Culture Act
• The Timber and Stone Act
• The Desert Land Act
• In Oklahoma so many came before the
government was able to sell so it is called
the Sooner State
The Morrill Act 1862
• Gave federal land within a state to the
states
• States could sell this land to establish
Land Grant Institutions (Agricultural
Colleges)…like MSU
1887 The Hatch Act
• Provided federal funds to establish
agricultural experimental stations
• Fertilizers
• Irrigation techniques
Protecting the Wilderness
• 1870 Henry Washburn and Nathaniel
Langford petitioned the government for
protection of parts of the wilderness
• By 1872 Yellowstone National Park was
established
• Some RRs were forced to return some
land
1893 The Turner Thesis
• By Frederick Jackson Turner
• Aka “The Significance of the Frontier on
American History”
• Suggested that Democracy would never
get old and stale like European
governments Because we had to reinvent
democracy every time we pushed through
the frontier…a myth
Hardships for Plains Settlers
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Draught
Fire
Floods
Blizzards
Locusts
Native Americans (still some)
Outlaws
Insanity
Population Growth on the Plains
• 1850 Only 1% of the population
• By 1900 30%
• Exodusters: Black settlers in the West
Dugouts and Soddies
• There were no trees to build with!
• Settlers dug into ravines and sides of hills
and lived inside
• Some cut and layered thick sod to make
houses…a soddy
Soddies and Dugouts
• WERE warm in the Winter and cool in the
summer and fireproof BUT
• They were small, dark leaked and lots of
critters lived there too!
Women
• Plowed, P;anted and harvested with
husbands
• They sheared sheep, carded wool and put
up fruit and vegetables for the winter
• They hauled water, made the family
clothing, soap, candles
• Active in Church and schools
New Inventions
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1837
1847
1869
1841
1874
1878
1878
John Deere’s Steel Plow
McCormick’s Reaper
The Spring-tooth Harow
The grain drill
Barbed Wire
The Corn binder
Improved Reaper
More produced in less time!
• 1830 One bushel of grain took 183
minutes to produce
• By 1900 One bushel of grain took 10
minutes to produce
OVERPRODUCTION
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Wolrd wide
Caused falling prices for farm goods
Farmers tried to produce more
Caused more overproduction!
• Land value declined
• Many lost their farms
Bonanza Farms
• Huge commercial farms
• One-crop farming
• Not as flexible as smaller farms
• Drought, etc. caused many to fail
Other Farming Problems
• High transportation costs (RRs)
• Farm machinery expensive
• Most land mortgaged and interest rates
were high
• In the South’’’the Crop Lien System