The West
1848 -1893
Which of the following statements is true
about women in the western territories
during the 1800s?
1. They were educated and had
more leisure time to pursue their
interests and hobbies
2. They often mined for gold and
assisted cowboys in the cattle
industry.
3. They found a flexible society
with more freedom and fewer
traditional roles than in cities.
4. Their traditional roles and
expectations were the same as
they had always been.
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The West
1848 -1893
The American Frontier
Prior to the Civil War, thousands had gone
west, seeking fame, fortune, and new lives.
After the end of the war, the
pace of settlement increased
dramatically.
“Go West, Young Man”
• Why did people go West?
Why would people want to migrate West?
The Lure of the West
Pull Factors
Government incentives
• Pacific Railway Act
• Morrill Land-Grant
Act
• Homestead Act
Private Property
Miners
Ranchers
Farmers
Push Factors
Crowding back East
Displaced farmers
Former slaves
Eastern farmland
expensive
Ethnic and religious
repression in Europe
Haven for outlaws
Which of the following was NOT a pull factor for
settlers who migrated West during the 1800s?
1.
2.
3.
4.
freedom of religion
discovery of gold
large tracts of land
the Civil War
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Theme: Migration
• The movement of people within the United
States has had a significant impact on the
nation. These movements have been both
voluntary and involuntary.
• Select a period of migration that had an impact
on the United States and for each
– Describe the historical circumstances that led to the
migration
– Discuss the impact of the migration on the United
States
“No man has a right to fix the boundary of the march of a
nation; no man has a right to say to his country: this far you
should go and no further.”
The author of this statement would most likely have
supported the United States policy of
1.
2.
3.
4.
containment
manifest destiny
Sectionalism
isolationism
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Gold!!
• Gold and silver discoveries send many west.
• First major Western Gold find was in California
in 1848.
– 80,000 Forty-niners came to California, few became
rich.
• Comstock Lode in Nevada
– Gold and silver discovered in 1859.
• Pike’s Peak
– Gold discovery brought 100,000 into Colorado.
Mining
• First pan-handlers sifted
for gold in streams.
• Big strikes led to the
formation of Boomtowns.
• Most boomtowns
disappear when the gold
ran out.
• A few towns survive to
become large cities:
– San Francisco, Denver,
Sacramento.
Who Made Money?
• Many miners arrived too late
to find gold
• The people who made
money were those who
recognized how to supply
goods and services to the
miners.
• Levi Strauss – Opened
General Store in San
Francisco
– Rec’d patent for Jeans with
rivets
Miners
• People of all classes,
races, and genders
come West to mine.
• Most were single
white men, but there
were AfricanAmerican miners.
• 1/3 of all Western
miners were Chinese.
“The Most Rapid and Effective
Americanization”
• On the frontier, immigrants were
refashioned into new people, no longer,
English or German or Irish or Swedish but
American
Cattle Ranching
• Beef was in high demand after the Civil
War as cities grew.
• Easy to enter Cattle Ranching as
range/feed was free.
• Growth of railroads made it possible to get
western beef to eastern markets.
Longhorns on the Range
• As with mining,
cattletowns develop
near railheads to
handle cattle drives.
• Time of the cowboy
and the open West.
– The setting for much
of the Hollywood
West.
Cowboys from Texas herded the
cattle to the stocking yards of
Abilene, Dodge City, Cheyenne
Large meat companies like the
Swifts and Armours needed the
cattle in the meat-packing plants
of Chicago before shipping the
meat to the East Coast markets
Men like Wild Bill Hickok and Wyatt Earp were hired to keep law and order in the rising
towns of the West.
End of the Range
• Cattle drives end in the late 1880s.
• Overgrazing, a severe drought, and a
harsh winter decimated cattle herds.
• Joseph Glidden’s invention, barbed-wire,
enabled farmers to fence off their land and
ended the open ranges needed to feed
cattle.
What impact did the invention of barbed wire
have on the Western territories?
1. Cowboys and their cattle often got
hurt or stuck on the sharp wire
2. Ranchers could fence in their own
livestock as well as keep roaming
cattle and other animals from
grazing their land, effectively
ending the open range.
3. Native Americans were more likely
to raid a ranch with barbed wire
because they thought it went
against nature.
4. It opened lands previously closed
to cattle grazing.
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The Range Wars
Sheep
Herders
Cattle
Ranchers
• Lincoln County Wars
• Billy the Kid joins
“The Regulators” to
bring murderers to
justice
• Billy would be hunted
down by bounty
hunters, the military
and law men
Colt .45 Revolver
God didn’t make men equal.
Colonel Colt did!
Farming
Hundreds of thousands move
West to become farmers.
• The 1862 Homestead Act
gave 160 acres of land to
anyone who would work the
land for 5 years showing proof
of a dwelling and improvements
(They could buy the land after 6 months if
they had the money)
Daniel
Freeman –
The First
Homesteader
The 1862 Morrill Act gave
states western land to sell
to fund new colleges—
increased educational
opportunities and provided
cheap land for settlers and
speculators.
“...at least one college where the leading
object shall be, without excluding other
scientific and classical studies and including
military tactics, to teach such branches of
learning as are related to agriculture and the
mechanic arts...”
Sodbusters
“The Rain will Follow the Plow”
• Farming on the Great
Plains was not easy.
• Sod was thick and
hard to plow the first
time.
• Few trees, little wood
for buildings, so many
built their houses from
sod.
What foreign policy action granted the
United States the land within the Great
Plains?
Great Plains Farming
• Environmental factors made it difficult to farm
the Great Plains:
– Little rainfall
– Many crops not suited to the conditions
• Not until farmers adopted dry farming or
irrigation did Great Plains farmers really
succeed.
The Farmer is the Man When the farmer comes to town
With his wagon broken down,
Oh, the farmer is the man
Who feeds them all. . . .
The farmer is the man,
The farmer is the man,
Lives on credit till the fall;
Then they take him by the hand
And they lead him from the land,
And the middleman’s the man
Who gets it all. . . .
-- American folk song
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The problem identified by this folk song was a result of
1. farm productivity declining for several
decades
2. too many Americans entering the
occupation of farming
3. poor farming practices destroying
cropland
4. low profits forcing many people out of
farming
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Farming Becomes Mechanized
McCormick invents
the mechanical
reaper
John Deere invents
the steel plow
Early farmers who settled in the West found their existing farming
equipment would not cut through the tough prairie soil. John
Deere invented a new tool to solve this problem. What was the
innovation he developed?
1.
2.
3.
4.
mechanical reaper
steel plow
barbed wire
windmill
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Russian Immigrants Save the
Great Plains!
• Russian Mennonite immigrants from the Steppe
region of Russia bring wheat seeds with them
• This particular wheat grows well in the plains
region
• Region becomes the “Bread Basket”
Frederick Jackson Turner
• A historian whose 1893 Frontier Thesis claimed
that the West had been completely settled.
• Used US Census data to back his the argument in
his essay.
• While many continued to move West, the frontier
was considered closed. Americans would have to
look for new frontiers to conquer.
“Up to our own day American history is the history of the colonization of
the Great West. The existence of an area of free land, ...and the
advance of American settlement westward explain American
development.”
This quotation of the 1890's suggests that the American frontier
1. should be preserved for
free use by all the people
2. has mirrored European
values and social
patterns
3. will continue indefinitely
as a region to be
colonized
4. has had a positive effect
on the growth of the
United States
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Review
• What 3 options did settlers in
the West have to choose from?
– Mining
– Farming
– Ranching
Thinking beyond the Notes
• Explain how the following characteristics
central to being American were prevalent
in the West.
– Individualism
– Self-Reliance
– Practicality
– Energy
– Inventiveness
– Confidence that the future would be better
than the present
Theme: Migration
• The movement of people within the United
States has had a significant impact on the
nation. These movements have been both
voluntary and involuntary.
• Select a period of migration that had an impact
on the United States and for each
– Describe the historical circumstances that led to the
migration
– Discuss the impact of the migration on the United
States
In the second half of the 19th century,
agriculture in the United States was
transformed most by the
1. increase in prices paid
for farm products
2. decline in the population
growth rate of the United
States
3. decline in demand for
agricultural products
4. increase in the use of
farm machinery
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The main reason for the passage of
the Homestead Act in 1862 was to
provide for
1. irrigation of desert
lands
2. national parks
3. farms on the Great
Plains
4. reservations for
Native American
Indians
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During the period from 1865 to 1900,
the rapid growth of cities in the western
part of the United States resulted
mainly from
1. better roads
2. a greater number of
canals
3. the invention of the
telegraph and
telephone
4. the growth of railroads
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“The Most Rapid and Effective Americanization”
Which statement about the westward movement in
the United States during the 19th century is most
accurate?
1. The frontier discouraged
interest in the expansion
of voting rights.
2. The frontier experience
tended to decrease
social class differences.
3. Western expansion
slowed the rate of
industrialization.
4. The West was settled
mostly by immigrants
from Asian nations.
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Which was a major result of the
Homestead Act of 1862?
1. increased public
awareness of the need for
conservation of natural
resources
2. increased development of
Western lands
3. decreased conflicts
between Native American
Indians and white settlers
4. decreased economic
opportunities for
easterners
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Exodusters
To escape the violence and the discrimination in
the South, many African-Americans left.
Some went North to find
jobs in factories, but
thousands headed west
to take advantage of
farming opportunities.
Those who went west
were known as
Exodusters, many
ending up in Kansas.