1. The Great West

2. Why Go West? Pull Factors: things (usually good) attracting settlers Get rich fast Gold silver Private property Gov’t was practically giving the land away Independence and spirit of individualism Push: things that make (usually bad) settlers want to leave their homes Political instability Economic hard times Racial discrimination for AA

3. Homestead Act Another pull factor Government offered farm plots of 160 acres to anyone willing to live on the land for five years, dig a well, and build a road Many were former slaves

4. Life in the West Plagued by windstorms, blizzards, droughts, locusts and loneliness Tough life but were inventive Create sod homes Build wind mills Used the steel plow to help cultivate land Morrill Land Grant: Passed by Congress to give lands to states so they could establish agricultural schools A&T University NC State

5. “Exodusters” African Americans who fled the South after Reconstruction and headed West to Oklahoma and Kansas looking for more opportunities Get their name from the Book of Exodus when Moses led his people to the Promised Land which was Oklahoma for the Exodusters

6. Exodusters in Nicodemus, Kansas

7. Problems in the West To keep order, vigilantes (self- appointed law enforcers) settled disputes Cities only “boomed” when the resources were plentiful…when they were gone (the bust) so were the people and the town became a Ghost Town

8. Ghost Towns?

9. Transcontinental Railroad A rail link between the East and West to transport goods Built by private companies, not the government but still gave their support by giving loans for the land to companies Central Pacific laid tracks east of Sacramento, CA Use Chinese immigrants for labor Union Pacific laid tracks west from Nebraska Use Irish immigrants for labor Two tracks met at Promontory Point, Utah

10. Central Pacific Union Pacific

11. Promontory Point, Utah

12. More Pull Factors Comstock Lode: first major discovery of silver in U.S. discovered under what is now Virginia City, Nevada Helped spur advances in the technology of mining Oklahoma Land Rush: Gov’t going to sell plots of land in Oklahoma 50,000 line up but only 42,000 plots Biggest rush to the West in one single day (April 22, 1889) Major pull factor

14. Cattle Kingdom The Texas longhorn roamed freely on open range (not fenced in) Were branded for identification Ranchers hired cowboys to round up their cattle, took them on cattle drives to the railroads for eastern markets Invention of refrigerated railcars by Gustavus Swift…meat can be shipped not the entire cow…much cheaper…decreases need for cattle drives The age of open range ends because of barbed wire

15. Cattle Drive

16. Closing the Frontier? In 1890 Census, government said that the frontier (place of uninhabited wilderness) was closed No empty land Frederick Jackson Turner writes his Frontier Thesis encouraging “rugged individualism”