Chapter 17 Section 1 Vocabulary

Immigrate-to move to a foreign region or country

manual-involving work done by hand

vigilante-self-appointing law enforcer

subsidy-grant of land or money

transcontinental railroad-a railroad line that spans the continent

Mining and Railroads

Boom and Bust!!

Settlements were built by settlers who rushed in for gold and silver. Many settlements did not last.

California gold rush of 1849 brought many settlers to California. This is also how the football team the 49ers got their name.

Most settlements were called boomtowns because of how fast they sprung up.

The territories that had mining were: Sierra Nevada, Rocky Mountains, Black Hills, and the Dakota territory.

The Comstock Lode In Sierra Nevada two Irish

prospectors found gold however Henry Comstock said that the gold they found was all on his land. The find became know as the Comstock Lode. A lode is a vain of rich and full of ore like coal, gold, and silver. Blue sand made it hard to dig out the gold. The blue sand had contained large amounts of silver, making the Comstock Lode the richest silver mine in the world. In the next 20 years, the Comstock Lode produced more than $300 million. Virginia City, Nevada became a boomtown because of this.

Boomtown LifeThings in boomtowns did not come cheap, miners would sometimes pay high prices for clean drinking water. They did not trust the water from streams because the water might have been polluted with chemicals and arsenic.

Women who entered the boomtowns usually opened restaurants, washed clothes, and baked pies. Some would also provide shelter for boarders. Many miners were of foreign countries. Usually boomtowns rang with Irish accents and other accents like Italian, German, Spanish, Chinese, and other languages. Many foreign miners faced hostility from others, the Chinese were restricted from claiming plots abandoned by others. Chinese peoples were often driven out of towns by mobs.

Frontier Justice

When the boomtowns went up, law and order was hard to find and it was needed quickly or people might start unnecessary violence over claims or money. When no order showed up people took problems into their own hands. These individuals called themselves vigilantes. As boomtowns grew people started to want a more stable form of law so they elected sheriffs and judges to replace these vigilantes.

In some of the towns, all of the ores were stripped from the mines. Many of these town after desertion became know as ghost towns.

The Railroad Boom

Railroad tracks funded by the government were laid to mines and boomtowns. Most tracks were asked to be laid straight through many National Parks. Thousands of acres of trees were destroyed to clear a path. Prior to the Civil War, all railroad tracks stopped at the Mississippi River. Subsidies were offered by the government to expand the railroad. Subsides are grants or loans to land.

Spanning the ContinentWestern settlers hoped for a Transcontinental Railroad; a

transcontinental railroad is a railroad that was meant to span the country. In 1862, Leland Stanford won the right to build the Transcontinental Railroad through the United States. Central Pacific would start from Sacramento, California and go east. While Union Pacific would start in Omaha, Nebraska, and go west. They decided to meet in the middle. The railroads had many immigrants and natives to help build the tracks. On May 10th, 1969 the two railroads met at Promontory, Utah. Stanford drove the final spike into the tracks.

Effects of the Railroad

New States Year of StatehoodNevada 1864Colorado 1876North Dakota 1889South Dakota 1889Montana 1889Idaho 1890Wyoming 1890

The railroad brought many new towns and states with it. It transported supplies, people, gold, and silver. The population grow because of the railroad and caused many regions to turn into states.

www.ccentre.wa.gov.au

www.history-map.com

www.nrm.org

www.tcrr.com

www.enviroscan.com

Bibliography Page

www.goldgold.com/tag/gold-mining-history

online.wsj.com/