The American
Frontier West
APUSH
U.S. government policies played a huge
role in getting people to move West.
Over time, the government made it
easier to buy land by either reducing the
cost per acre, or by allowing people to
purchase fewer acres. It also led to
earlier movement westward than if the
land had been sold at higher prices and
led to higher wages in the East since
potential laborers were moving West.
Land prices affected peopLe’s
ability to move West
• 1787- pay 1/3 cash; balance in 3 mos
• 1796- reservation price raised to $2 per acre;
pay ½ in 30 days & balance in 1 yr
• 1800- acreage req. dropped to 320 acres;
pay ¼ in 30 days & balance in 3 yrs
• 1804- acreage req. dropped to 160 acres
• 1820- reservation price dropped to $1.25; acreage req. dropped to 80;
credit repealed
• 1832- acreage req. dropped to 40 acres
• 1841- General Pre-emption Act put ceiling on max acreage to 160
acres & sales in cash
• 1854- Graduation Act- lowered prices of land that had been auctioned
but not sold (e.g. 12.5 cents/acre for land unsold for 30 years)
Us Gov’t sUspends saLe of federaL
lands, 1891
• Today the US gov’t owns over 775
million acres of land. This is over
1/3 of the total US land
• ALaska- 339 million acres
• National parks- 71 million acres
• Forrest service- 191 million acres
• Native American lands- 53 million acres
• Pentagon- 30 million acres
• Most land is west of the 100th meridian—panhandle of OK up
through KS, NE, SD, NE
• Most Minerals, timber, and oil come from these lands which are
leased for ranching, drilling & mining….this of course, is controversial
As a result, Americans went West in
record numbers in the mid- to late1800s, and by 1900 historians such as
Frederick Jackson Turner said that the
West was “closed.” As a result, there
were four main groups who competed
for the land….
Railroads
move
people
west
• 1st Transcontinental RR, 1862-69
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Pacific RR Act, 1862
Omaha, NE to Sacramento, CA
Land & $$$ incentives
Shortens trip westward
• RRs Recruited Workers
– 2.2m foreign born workers come, 1870-1900
– Immigrant = cheap labor
• Came to escape war, make $ & return
• Irish, Mexican-Americans & Chinese
• Attracted settlers
– Encouraged farmers (families) to specialize
in cash crops
– Encouraged cattle ranching b/c of lower
transportation costs
• Result: More people move West
Farming the West
• Late 1880s US needed new sources
of good soil, water, climate…
• Solution?
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Great Plains
Homestead Act (1862)
Timber Culture Act (1873)
Desert land Act (1877)
Timber & Stone Act (1878)
• Inventions help
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Windmill
Steel tipped Plow
Barbed wire
Mechanical Reaper
Threshing Machine
• Result: Land becomes more useful
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Easterner push for more wheat
More farmers = overproduction
Farm communities depend on each other
Led to conflict with ranchers…
• Cattle Industry: 3 Needs
– Open range for grazing & cattle drive
• Land too expensive to buy
individually so ranchers worked
together (to gain control)
• “Tragedy” & rules for the
“Commons”
– RRs to transport meat to market
• Cut costs = lots of profit
– New science of cattle breeding
• Cattlemen vs. Cowboys
– Cattlemen = big business owners
from the East
– Cowboys = Poor, young, 20%
Mexican or black
• Result: Peak Years 1880-1885
– Post-1885 draught, overgrazing,
fences, freezes…
– Replaced by smaller, fenced-in cattle
ranches
Cattlemen &
Cowboys
Striking it Rich?
• Boom Towns
– CA Gold, 1849-50
• Sutter’s Mill, CA
• Sutter got the land grants from
MX, but 9 days after his
discovery the land belonged to
the US
• By 1866 over 500 mining camps
(300 x 150 miles)
– NV Silver: “Comstock Lode”
• 1859 = $260,000
• 1861 = $2.5 million from an area
1 x 5 miles
– Other discoveries in ID, MT,
WY, CO, NM & AK
• Mining camp codes…
Striking it
Rich?
• Mining camp codes
– Described boundaries
– Defined exclusive claims
– Claims had to be marked
“All and everybody, this is my
claim, fifty feet on the gulch,
cordin to Clear Creek District
Law, backed up by my shotgun
amendments. Any person found
trespassing on this claim will be
persecuted to the full extent of
the law. This is no monkey tale
but I will assert by rites at the pint
of the sicks shirter if legally
necessary so taik heed and good
warnin”
Striking it Rich?
• Vs. Bust Cycle…
– Towns became ghost towns once
the ore was gone
•Real profits only made by
big mining companys
– Used expensive equipment & paid
wage laborers
•Result: The Wild West?
– Law & Order?
– Territorial growth → statehood
American Indians fight Back
•Indian Resistance, 1861-1867
– Atrocities on both sides
• Sand Creek, 1864
• Powder River & Fetterman Massacre, 1865
– Congressional investigations?
• Indian Retreat, 1867-1890
– Reservations
– The End of Resistance
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Custer, 1876
Chief Joseph, 1877
Geronimo, 1886
Ghost Dance & Wounded Knee, 1890
•Result: “New” Reservation System
– Helen Hunt Jackson, A Century of Dishonor
– Dawes Act, 1887: 160 acres to Americanize NAs
– Carlisle School (Carlisle, PA)
Chief Joseph
The Final Frontier?
• Did the frontier close?
– Gadsden Purchase finished the contiguous U.S.
– TransconRR = easy transport of goods/people
– Increased settlement
• Gov’t encouragement via land laws & give-aways
• Eastern industrial push for resources
•frederick Jackson Turner, in The
Significance of the Frontier in American
History (1893) argued that the West was the
chief influence in shaping a distinctive
American way of life
•The influence of the frontier included …
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Social Equality
Growth of Political Democracy
Nationalism
Faith in the future
Economic independence
Safety valve for factory workers
Invention
Wasteful Agriculture
Frederick Jackson Turner, 1861-1932
The TURNER THESIS
•Effects of the Close of the Frontier included…
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Lack of safety valve for labor led to labor strife
Immigrants crowd into large cities
Awakened the need for environmental conservation
Rise of imperialism to gain new markets, resources & investment opportunities
•Critiques of Turner
•Modern studies of The West
Reflection Qs
1. Name three groups and describe why they
went West.
2. Summarize the Turner Thesis in a few
sentences
3. List two things that you learned that were
interesting &/or that you will remember easily a
month from now.