The Great West

Why Go West?

Pull Factors: things (usually good) attracting settlers

Get rich fastGoldsilver

Private propertyGov’t was practically giving the land away

Independence and spirit of individualism

Push: things that make (usually bad) settlers want to leave their homes

Political instabilityEconomic hard timesRacial discrimination for AA

Homestead Act

Another pull factorGovernment offered farm plots of 160 acres to anyone willing to live on the land for five years, dig a well, and build a roadMany were former slaves

Life in the West

Plagued by windstorms, blizzards, droughts, locusts and loneliness

Tough life but were inventive

Create sod homes

Build wind mills

Used the steel plow to help cultivate land

Morrill Land Grant:Passed by Congress to give lands to states so they could establish agricultural schools

A&T University

NC State

“Exodusters”

African Americans who fled the South after Reconstruction and headed West to Oklahoma and Kansas looking for more opportunities

Get their name from the Book of Exodus when Moses led his people to the Promised Land which was Oklahoma for the Exodusters

Exodusters in Nicodemus, Kansas

Problems in the WestTo keep order, vigilantes (self-appointed law enforcers) settled disputesCities only “boomed” when the resources were plentiful…when they were gone (the bust) so were the people and the town became a Ghost Town

Ghost Towns?

Transcontinental RailroadA rail link between the East and West to transport goodsBuilt by private companies, not the government but still gave their support by giving loans for the land to companiesCentral Pacific laid tracks east of Sacramento, CA

Use Chinese immigrants for labor

Union Pacific laid tracks west from Nebraska

Use Irish immigrants for labor

Two tracks met at Promontory Point, Utah

Central Pacific

Union Pacific

Promontory Point, Utah

More Pull Factors

Comstock Lode:first major discovery of silver in U.S.

discovered under what is now Virginia City, Nevada

Helped spur advances in the technology of mining

Oklahoma Land Rush:Gov’t going to sell plots of land in Oklahoma

50,000 line up but only 42,000 plots

Biggest rush to the West in one single day (April 22, 1889)

Major pull factor

Cattle Kingdom

The Texas longhorn roamed freely on open range (not fenced in)

Were branded for identificationRanchers hired cowboys to round up their cattle, took them on cattle drives to the railroads for eastern markets

Invention of refrigerated railcars by Gustavus Swift…meat can be shipped not the entire cow…much cheaper…decreases need for cattle drivesThe age of open range ends because of barbed wire

Cattle Drive

Closing the Frontier?

In 1890 Census, government said that the frontier (place of uninhabited wilderness) was closed

No empty land

Frederick Jackson Turner writes his Frontier Thesis encouraging “rugged individualism”