Big Ideas
• Moving to new places changes the
people, land, and culture of the new
place as well as the place they left.
• Technology has many different types
of consequences, depending on how
people use that technology.
• Conflict causes change.
Georgia Performance
Standards
• SS5H3: The student will describe how life changed
in America at the turn of the century.
• Describe the role of the cattle trails in the late 19th century;
include the Black Cowboys of Texas, the Great Western Cattle
Trail, and the Chisholm Trail.
•
Describe the impact on American life of the Wright Brothers
(flight), George Washington Carver (science), Alexander Graham
Bell (communication), and Thomas Edison (electricity).
• Explain how William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt
expanded America’s role in the world; include the Spanish
American War and the building of the Panama Canal.
• Describe the reason people emigrated to the United States,
from where they emigrated, and where they settled.
Physical Features of the
West
• As the country became “smaller”, people traveled
west and came upon numerous physical features of
the United States which were new and exciting.
Let’s embark on a scavenger hunt to try and
locate some of these physical features.!
1. The Grand Canyon
2. The Salton Sea
3. The Great Salt Lake
4. The Mojave Desert
The Cattle Drives
• In the 1860’s cattle was so abundant in Texas that
one cow would sell for only $4.00.
• This same cattle could be sold in the Northern and
Eastern United States for about $40.00 a piece.
This is called:
Supply and Demand
So what would you have done if you were a Texas cattle rancher?
The only problem was…
…the railroads did not cross into Texas. The closest railheads (a
town where railroad tracks begin or end) were hundreds of miles
away.
The Cattle Drives
• The solution was…
…to “drive” the cattle to places like Abilene, Kansas so they
could be put on trains and shipped to stockyards in the
northern and eastern part of the United States.
The most popular trail was
the Chisholm Trail, which
started in San Antonio,
Texas and ended in
Kansas.
Another popular trail was
the Great Western Trail,
which start in Bandera,
Texas and ended in Ogallala,
Nebraska.
http://www.bcr.org/cdp/exhibits/westerntrails/cattle/index.html
http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0500/frameset_reset.html?http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0500/stories/0502_0100.htm
l
http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/program/episodes/five/cowboys.htm
Life on the Drives
• What was life like for the cowhands who worked on
these cattle drives?
http://www.cartermuseum.org/collections/smith/
The End of The Cattle Drives
• The cattle drives only lasted for about 20 years.
1.
What do you
think were
some causes
for the end of
this important
era for the
West?
The Homesteaders of the Great Plains
region were getting upset that the cattle
were trampling their new land and their
crops.
a)
to keep the cattle drives off of their
land they put up fences with barbed
wire
2. The railroads began to grow. Railroads
were built in Texas in the 1870’s, ending
the need for cattle drives to northern
railheads.
3. Many cattle died during the abnormally
cold winter of 1886-1887.
Black Cowboys
• Many African –Americans had just found freedom from slavery due to
the 13th Amendment. For African Americans, the Old West represented
a new home, a new beginning, and a new opportunity to enjoy freedom,
which they so desperately wanted.
Nat Love
Bill Picket
http://www.blackcowboys.com/blackcowboys.htm
Websites
• http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/
Resources
•
http://www.sonofthesouth.net/texas/westward-expansion-map.htm
•
http://www.ncgold.com/goldrushtown/photoalbum/early_photography_people/01people.jpg
•
http://images.google.com