1. Closing the West
Key Concept 5.1.I - Popular enthusiasm for U.S. expansion, bolstered by economic and security interests, resulted in the acquisition of new territories, substantial migration westward, and new overseas initiatives.
Key Concept 6.1.I - Large-scale industrial production—accompanied by massive technological change, expanding international communication networks, and pro-growth government policies—generated rapid economic development and business consolidation.
Key Concept 6.2.II - Larger numbers of migrants moved to the West in search of land and economic opportunity, frequently provoking competition and violent conflict.

2. Closing the Frontier
“American social development has been continually beginning over again on the frontier. This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces dominating American character....In the crucible of the frontier the immigrants were Americanized, liberated, and fused into a mixed race, English in neither nationality nor characteristics...."
Frederick Jackson Turner’s Frontier Thesis: Believed that the frontier was the basis of the American identity – self-reliance, innovation, adaptation, independence, and opportunity

3. Home on the Range

4. How they got there…
The Homestead Act: Citizens could claim 160 acres of government land west of the Mississippi
Meant to encourage slaves and poor Southerners to defect from the South, as well as encourage Northerners to help settle the West (create more states)
Pay a small filing fee
Must improve the land
Must build a dwelling
After five years, the land became theirs, free of charge.

5. A famous Homestead Certificate

6. Sodbusters
Sod, infertile soil, low rainfall, insect infestations, wildfires, and Indians

7. I shoulda been a Cowboy

8. The American
Buffalo
10+ million before Westward Migration; nearly extinct by the end of the 1800s.
Trophy hunters, shoe leather, railroads, ranching, homesteaders all caused the decline of the bison
Deliberate (kill the Indian way of life)

9. The Longhorn
Marked the end of the Open Range era and led to the entire reorganization of ranching.

10. Chisholm Trail – The “Long Drive”
← Over 700 miles!
Texas to Kansas

11. The Long Winter (1887) Virtually destroyed ranching industry
Remaining cattle were emaciated, sold for much lower prices, bankrupted ranchers
Western life illustrated in the paintings of Charles Russell
“Waiting for a Chinook”
Harsh Winter
Destruction of ranching
The few remaining cattle were in poor health, being emaciated and suffering from frostbite. This resulted in the cattle being sold for much lower prices, in some cases leading ranch owners to bankruptcy.
Charles Russell
Known as the “cowboy artist,” he painted vividly realistic images of the West, with some of the few accurate portrayals of Native American tribes.
His painting “Waiting for a Chinook” revealed the devastation of the Winter of 1887 to the East.

12. ’49ers Strike Gold!

13. January 24, 1848 – Sutter’s Mill,
Coloma, California
Strauss expected the miners would welcome his buttons, scissors, thread and bolts of fabric. He also brought along canvas sailcloth, intended to make tents and covers for the Conestoga wagons many miners lived out of.
Strauss opened his dry goods wholesale business as Levi Strauss & Co. He often led his pack-horse, heavily laden with merchandise, to the mining camps in the Gold Rush country.[citation needed] He learned that prospectors and miners complained about their cotton trousers and pockets tearing too easily. A tailor named Jacob Davis decided to make rugged overalls to sell to the miners.[citation needed] Fashioned from brown sailcloth made from hemp, his trousers has ore storage pockets that were nearly impossible to split.[citation needed] Davis wanted to register a patent, but lacked money. Strauss agreed to help him and they went into partnership.
On May 20, 1873, Strauss and Davis received United States patent # for using copper rivets to strengthen the pockets of denim work pants.
California Gold Rush

14. Placer mining: simple equipment such as picks, shovels, and pans.
Sluice mining: diverts the current of a river into earthen or wooden trenches. The water was directed to a box with metal “riffle” bars that disturbed the current, causing heavier minerals to settle on the bottom of the box. A screen at the end of the riffle box kept the minerals from flowing out.
Pikes Peak (CO)
Comstock Lode (NV)
Black Hills Lode
AK Gold Rush
Tombstone silver boom
General Mining Act of 1872: Miners and prospectors in the California Gold Rush of 1849 found themselves in a legal vacuum. Although the US federal government had laws governing the leasing of mineral land, the United States had only recently acquired California by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and had little presence in the newly acquired territories.
Miners organized their own governments in each new mining camp (for example the Great Republic of Rough and Ready), and adopted the Mexican mining laws then existing in California that gave the discoverer right to explore and mine gold and silver on public land
Mining Industry

15. Boom Towns to Ghost Towns