Reasons for Westward Expansion6th Grade Social Studies

Mrs. Brown

USII.4a

Reason #1

Opportunities for Land Ownership

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

Click

Here for

Video

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

http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/transcontinental-railroad-2.jpg

Transcontinental RailroadsThey met in the middle…

Reason #3

Possibility of Wealth from Gold and Silver Mines

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

http://members.aol.com/gsahoard/carsoncitymint.jpg

Carson City Mint, Carson City, Nevada*Built in Response to the Comstock Lode

The Comstock Load: Mines

Virginia City, Nevada

Then: 1860’s Now: 2008

http://renoscasinos.com/virginia/street2.jpghttp://www.collectsource.com/Image17.gif

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.”

Reason #4

Enough said…not description necessary.

I’m Bored…Heading West!

Desire for Adventure!

Reason #5

A New Beginning for Former Slaves

Freedman: The Exodusters

Waiting for the steamboat to Kansas

Advertisement for the migration of freedman to Kansas

http://middle.usm.k12.wi.us/faculty/taft/Unit5/westwebquest/Exodusters/levee.gif

http://historymatters.gmu.edu/images/gotokansas.jpeg

Freedman: The Exodusters

Nicodemus, Kansas Nicodemus, Kansas

http://www.learnhistory.org.uk/west/black%20homesteaders.jpg

http://www.legendsofamerica.com/photos-kansas/ExodustersNicodemusKS-500.jpg