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Mining and Railroads
By: Drake & Andrew
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2. Boom and Bust
In many parts of the west, people came rushing in from all around the country for gold and silver.
It wasn’t long before the miners had reached California, Sierra Nevada, Rocky Mountains and the Black Hills of North Dakota. Once they got there, they started mining.

3. The Comstock Lode
Close to the Civil War, prospectors began searching for gold in Sierra, Nevada.
Two Irish men found gold, but Henry Comstock said that the gold was claimed on his land. This became known as the Comstock Lode.
A Lode is a rich vein of ore
During the Comstock Lode, a blue tinted sand kept sticking to all the mining equipment. The blue mud turned out to be loaded with silver.
The comstock lode turned out to be one of the richest silver mines in the world.
In 20 years the Comstock Lode produced $300 million dollars.

4. The Boom Spreads
After the Civil war had ended prospectors moved out west.
They found valuable ores in Montana, Idaho, and Colorado.
They had a gold strike in South Dakota Black Hills.
Comstock gave up and ended up selling his mining rights for $11,000 and two mules.
By around the 1880s, mining had become a big business out west.

5. Boomtown Life
Many cities were formed because of people digging for ores and gold.
Mining camps quickly grew into boomtowns.
A Boomtown is a town undergoing rapid growth due to sudden prosperity.
Nothing was cheap in the boomtown life. Sometimes miners would have to pay very high prices for just a bottle of drinking water.
They didn’t want to drink from the stream because of the many chemicals that were in the water.
Women made a good living in the mining boom. Some opened restaurants, washed clothes or took in boarders.
There were many different ethnic groups in the boomtowns, including Irish, Italian, German, Spanish and Chinese.

6. Frontier Justice
Towns were coming so fast that law and order were hard to find and miners had to form vigilantes - appointed law keepers.
Vigilantes also hunted down bandits and imposed their own brands of justice.
Residents of growing boomtowns began to look for forms of government that would last longer. Vigilantes were replaced by sheriffs, marshals, and judges.
Ores were soon extracted from mining towns and the mines were shut down.
sheriff

7. The Railroad Boom Aid To Railroads
Subsidies - grants of land or money-were offered by the federal government to extend railroads past the Mississippi River.
track area next
(miles) to track
federal loans were also given 1
10 miles2
180 million acres
1 acre = miles2
28125

8. spanning the continent
Transcontinental railroad - railroad reaching from coast to coast
In 1862, Leland Stanford started building the Central Pacific R.R. out from Sacramento eastward.
At the same time, the Union Pacific R.R. was in westward from Omaha
When the tracks met, they would span the continent
Work was dangerous for the workers, including the ten-thousand Chinese that came, but, eventually they finished on May 10th 1869.

9. effects of the railroad
New towns sprang up pouring out gold and silver
States sprang up as a result such as
Nevada
Colorado
the Dakotas
Montana
Washington
Idaho
and Wyoming

10. a little more vocab immigrate- to move to a foreign region or country
manual- involving work done by hand

11. The End