United States Expansion - Settling The West (1853-1890)

[Music] The towering Rocky Mountains ran north and south across the west dividing it into two basic regions. Immediately west of the mountains was a great interior basin. This was an arid desert region. East of the Rockies was the extensive region of the Great Plains. Much of this was a great flat prairie land of grass, few trees, and little rainfall. The geography of the West was not encouraging to settlers. Also discouraging was the menace of the Indians, fierce hunters and warriors who would resist the loss of their hunting grounds to settlers. Yet, despite the formidable geography of the region and its fierce inhabitants, settlers would be drawn to the west. In 1858 near Pikes Peak on the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains, there occurred an event which gave impetus to this great westward movement. Gold was discovered in the year following the Pikes Peak discovery in the mountains on the western side of the interior basin. The Commtock load was discovered. Here were rich veins of gold and silver. The news spread quickly and was flashed to all parts of the nation. The magic word gold drew men once again westward just as it had 10 years earlier in the days of the California gold rush. Men came from all parts of the country by any means of transportation available. As thousands of gold seekers poured into the mountain areas and as new mineral discoveries were made, mining camps emerged and grew into towns. among them in Arizona, Prescott, Globe, and Tucson. In the Colorado territory, Denver, Central City, and Creek in Nevada, Virginia City, and Carson City in Idaho, Lewon, Oroino, and Pierce City. In these bustling mining towns, many kinds of products and services were required. Merchants came from the east to start general stores, banks, blacksmith shops, and newspapers. The chance of striking it rich drew many adventurous men and women to the new towns of the west. While these towns often became permanent settlements, sometimes they decayed into ghost towns when the mines in a district had been played out and the miners had moved on. So it was the mineral wealth of the west that first brought large numbers of men into this vast region. At the time the first mining towns were springing up, another important development was taking place in the state of Texas. Here were the beginnings of the cattle industry. Texas cattlemen were allowed to graze their herds of longhorned cattle freely on public lands called the open range which spread from Texas north through the great plains. While eastern markets such as Chicago, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and New York offered high prices for cattle. These markets were too far from Texas for profitable overland cattle drives. There was no practical way of moving the cattle east until the railroad was extended as far west as Kansas during the Civil War period. Then in 1867, cattle pens and loading facilities were built near the railroad tracks at Abalene, Kansas. Soon more rail lines were built from the east and cattle could be driven profitably from Texas along such trails as the Chisel Trail to Abalene, the Shauny trails to Junction City and Kansas City and the Western Trail to Dodge City and Ogalala and then could be shipped east by railroad or wintered usually on the northern plains and sent to market the next year. And so the cattle industry grew. In 1862, the first homestead act was signed into law by President Lincoln. This homestead law offered the head of any family 160 acres of government land at a low price if he would settle the land and cultivate it for at least 5 years. With the passage of this law and other laws, farmers, the most permanent of pioneer groups, would come into conflict with the cattle industry as many thousands of families began the move westward. As great numbers of families traveled west to take over their new lands in the 1860s, the final and most significant phase of western settlement had begun. Hope ran high among these settlers that this new land would bring them wealth and security. But for many enthusiastic pioneers, hope would turn to disappointment. They would find because of the lack of water that 160 acres was not enough land for making an adequate living in the West. Settlers would have to develop the skills of dry farming. Later laws would help the farmers by giving them more land. But more important to the settlement of the West was the building of thousands of miles of railroads, including the first transcontinental railroad in 1869. Now crops could be shipped by rail to profitable eastern markets, making farming in the West more desirable. To encourage railroad building, the government sometimes gave the young railroads up to 20 square miles of land for every mile of track they built. The railroad companies then offered this land for sale. Farmers eagerly bought and farmed these railroad lands. The coming of these farmers brought to a climax the greatest migration the West had known. These settlers faced many hardships in turning the great plains into farmlands. The problem of scant water supply was partially solved by the windmill which put the steady winds of the plains to work pumping water from wells. Because of the scarcity of wood on the treeless plains, some settlers lived in sod houses. The lack of wood also made wood fences impractical. Without fences, the settller's fields were open to wandering herds of cattle. But the development of inexpensive barbed wire in 1874 made fences practical in the treeless plains. And so the open cattle range was ended. By 1890, nearly all cattle raising was done within closed ranches on lands generally unsuited to farming at that time. Also by 1890, the Indians had fought their last losing battles with the advancing settlers for their hunting grounds. Finally, when the great herds of buffalo, the Indians main source of food, were brought to near extinction by white hunters, most of the plains Indians surrendered themselves to government reservations. Between the 1850s and the 1890s, population had spread across the country. By 1890, settlers could be found in most sections of the West. Americans now had a chance to look back on nearly 40 years of western settlement. What had happened? The mineral wealth of the West had been tapped. A huge cattle industry had developed. An extensive network of railroads had been built. Much of the Great Plains had been transformed into a national granary. New western states had been admitted. Kansas in 1861, Nevada in 1864, Nebraska in 1867, Colorado in 1876, Montana and North and South Dakota in 1889, the same year as Washington, a Pacific coastal state, and in 1890, Idaho and Wyoming. But more important perhaps than gold or cattle or land was the pioneering spirit of the settlers themselves. For with the settlers had come the qualities of courage, individualism, and justice. Qualities that the nation would need to face new and different frontiers in the coming 20th century.