1. Miners Ranchers Farmers
chapter 7, section 3

2. Miners

3. Gold Miners California gold rush, 1849 (49ers)
near Pike’s Peak, 1859 (59ers)
Comstock Lode
$400 million in gold and silver by 1890
Responsible for Nevada’s statehood

5. Finding Gold
Individual prospectors look for traces of gold in mountain streams (placer mining)
When found, deep-shaft mining begins.
Expensive equipment required
Wealthy investors required

7. Boom Towns
Rich strikes created boom towns saloons, dance-hall girls, vigilantes
Many became ghost towns just a few years later.
Other towns that served the mines became important commercial centers.
San Francisco, Sacramento, Denver

8. Mining Towns Similar to industrial cities
Workers were also from Europe, Latin America, and China.
½ the population was often foreign born
Greatly increased Western population

9. Foreign Backlash Resentment among whites
Miner’s Tax ($20 / month) in CA
Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) prohibited further Chinese immigration

10. Ranchers

11. Ranching
Civil War – TX is cut off from CSA 5 million heads of cattle roam freely
TX cattle business – easy to enter FREE CATTLE!
Ranchers Kill off the buffalo

12. Railroads
RR starts in Kansas (Cow towns) RR goes to KC, St. Louis, Chicago
Steers bought for $5 / head and sold for up to $80 / head
Refrigerated railcars made it even cheaper.

13. Cattle Drives RR didn’t go into TX Cowboys drove cattle to Kansas
1 cowboy per cattle up to 1,500 miles to Kansas $30 per month, paid in 1 lump sum (for quick spending)

19. End of Cattle Drives 1880s overgrazing destroyed the grass
blizzard and drought (90% of cattle die)

20. Farmers

21. Farming Homestead Act of 1862 160 acres is yours after 5 years
500,000 Homestead families 2.5 million families had to buy land from the RR

22. Housing
Made of sod strips of grass with thick roots and earth attached
No trees to make houses No trees to make fences
Joseph Glidden invents barbed wire to fence GP land.

24. Hard Times
Many discover that 160 acres is not enough to survive. 2 of 3 farms fail by 1900

25. The Family Everyone had to work in order to survive
Men did heavy manual labor
Children collected wood & carried water
Women did chores around the house, managed the money, raised the children, provided food (crops, butter, chickens, milk)

26. Bonanza Farms Run like big business High volume Drove down prices
Squeezed out the small farmers

27. Dry Farming The only way to farm successfully in the GP
Crops that don’t require much water
Keeping fields free of weeds
Digging deep furrows to reach the water
New plows developed to make several furrows at once.

28. Frontier Myths

29. Not as wild as you thought…

30. The Closing of the Frontier
The move westward began in the 1860’s
In 1890, the Department of the Interior declared the that the frontier was settled.
Government begins to reserve land.
The West opened and closed in a generation…