The American Promise: A Compact History Third Edition Chapter 18 – Section 2 – Land Fever The West in the Gilded Age, 1870–1900 Copyright © 2007 by Bedford/St. Martin’s Roark Johnson Cohen Stage Lawson Hartmann

Land Fever Moving West: Homesteaders and Speculators Ranchers and Cowboys Tenants, Sharecroppers, and Migrants Commercial Farming and Industrial Cowboys

People who ventured west faced hardship, loneliness, and deprivation Blizzards, tornadoes, grasshoppers, hailstorms, draught, prairie fires, accidental death, and disease were only a few of the catastrophes that could befall even the best farmer.

The Homestead Act of 1862 promised 160 acres free to any individual who settled on the land for five years; however, homesteaders still needed as much as $1,000 for a house, a team of farm animals, a well, fencing, and seed.

For women on the frontier, simple daily tasks such as obtaining water and fuel meant backbreaking labor.

By the 1870s, much of the best land was taken, given to the railroads as land grants or to the states to finance education. The least desirable tracts were left for homesteaders. The railroads were by far the biggest winners in the scramble for western land.

As land grew scarce on the prairie in the 1870s, farmers began to push farther west, moving into western Kansas, Nebraska, and eastern Colorado--an area known as the Great American Desert.

A period of relatively good rainfall in the early 1880s encouraged farming, but a protracted drought in the late 1880s and early 1890s sent starving farmers reeling back from the plains.