final reasons for westward expansion 2015
TRANSCRIPT
Homesteaders Circa 1880 – 1900’s
1. Opportunities for Land Ownership
• The Homestead Act– January 1, 1862– Anyone could file for 160
acres of free land– The land was yours in
5 years if you made the following improvements on the land:
• Built a house on it• Dug a well• Broken (plowed) 10 acres of
land• Fenced in a specific amount of
land• Actually lived there!
What inventions and adaptations helped the homesteaders fulfill the requirements set forth
by the Homestead Act?
• Building a house
• Digging a well
• Farming 10 acres
• Fencing in land
Soddies…Sod Houses
Windmills
Steel Plow
Barbed Wire
Reason #2
Technological Advances – Transcontinental
Railroad
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2. Transcontinental Railroad
• Pacific Railway Act, 1862– Authorized 2
companies to construct the railroad
• Union Pacific• Central Pacific
http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=32#
• Union Pacific– >8,000 German,
Irish, & Italian immigrants employed to built railroad
– Built West from the Missouri River in Omaha, Nebraska
– Constructed a total of 1,087 miles of railway
http://www.apa.si.edu/ongoldmountain/gallery2/X46214_6.jpg
2. Transcontinental Railroads
• Central Pacific– Built East from
Sacramento, California
– Employed over 10,000 Chinese immigrants as laborers
– Constructed approx. 690 miles of railway
– Cross California’s Sierra Nevada Mountain Range
• Blasted 15 tunnelshttp://www.nps.gov/archive/gosp/research/workmen.htm
2. Transcontinental Railroads
• “The last rail is laid. The last spike is driven. The Pacific Railroad is completed.”
• May 10, 1869 in Promontory, Utah
• Travel Time = less than 1 week, coast to coast
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Transcontinental RailroadsThey met in the middle…
The California Gold Rush…mines dried up!
• By mid-1950’s• California miners who
still hoped to strike it rich headed east to the Colorado Rockies in search of gold and silver.
• Prospectors from the east continued to head west, through the Great Plains to the Rocky Mountains in search of their fortune.
http://www.ghostcowboy.com/files/images/goldmine_gc.preview.jpg
Pike’s Peak or Bust!
• Pike’s Peak, 1858– Colorado Rocky Mountains– By the spring of 1959, fifty
thousand prospectors had fled to Pike’s Peak
– Skimmed gold particles & gold dust from the streams
– They scratched particles of gold from the surface of the ground
– Newspapers reported that prospectors were making $20 a day…that was quite a lot back then! http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/f/f5/270px-Pikes_Peak_miners.jpg
The Comstock Load, 1859
• Virginia City, Nevada: Silver Mining– The largest Discovery
of Silver Ore• $8,000,000 silver
per month• Hundreds of
millions of dollars worth of silver & gold ore
• Helped establish Nevada as a U.S. State
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Carson City Mint, Carson City, Nevada*Built in Response to the Comstock Lode
Virginia City, Nevada
Then: 1860’s Now: 2008
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The Homestake Mine South Dakota, 1889
“The Homestake Mine was one of the top producers of gold ore in the United States. It was owned by George Hearst, a successful miner in the Great Plains who held shares of the Compton Lode in Virginia City, Nevada. Known to be “almost illiterate” he became a millionaire industrialist, politician and publisher. When he died, he was a United States Senator. He is the father of Media Mogul, William Randolph Hearst, who founded the Hearst Publishing Empire.”
Freedman: The Exodusters
Waiting for the steamboat to Kansas
Advertisement for the migration of freedman to Kansas
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Freedman: The Exodusters
Nicodemus, Kansas Nicodemus, Kansas
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