U.S. History 11 - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

U.S. History 11

Introductory Unit

Note Packet Two

“From Sea to Shining Sea”

Coach StylesSlide2

Introductory Unit : “From Sea to Shining Sea” NP 2

The Homestead Act of 1862 and the eventual defeat of the Indians opened up millions of acres to hundreds of thousands of Americans who dreamed of answering the call to “GO WEST!”

The West was a place of new opportunity.

It was a place for new beginnings.

It was a place with a future.

For many, it was “The American Dream.”Slide3

Introductory Unit : “From Sea to Shining Sea” NP 2

The new settlers of the West were different from the early Western wanderers, such as the mountain man, the bachelor soldier, and the lonely prospector.

The West was now attracting the farmer and the family.

With the family came permanent, stable communities.Slide4

Introductory Unit : “From Sea to Shining Sea” NP 2

The pioneers who first settled the West recognized its great potential.

Farmers

,

miners

, and ranchers all searched for ways to unlock the potential of the West.Slide5

Introductory Unit : “From Sea to Shining Sea” NP 2

FARMING ON THE PLAINS

Despite the hopes of many settlers, the

Great Plains

was not a farmer’s paradise.

Challenges included: Unpredictable and often insufficient rainfallExtreme

temperatures

, exceeding 100⁰ F in the summer with raging blizzards and bone-chilling cold in the winter.

Drought

and

hot winds

fed dust storms and prairie fires.

Grasshoppers

,

locusts

, and

boll weevils

ravaged crops and destroyed property.Slide6

Introductory Unit : “From Sea to Shining Sea” NP 2

New

technology

was a tremendous aid to the large western farms.

New farm

implements, such as multiple-furrow plows, harrows (equipped with spring teeth to dislodge debris and break up the ground), and automatic drills, saved the farmers much time and effort.

Steam-powered

threshers

arrived on the scene by 1875, and

cornhuskers

and

cornbinders

by the 1890s.Slide7

Introductory Unit : “From Sea to Shining Sea” NP 2

Congress had established the federal Department of

Agriculture

in 1862 as part of the

Morrill Land-Grant

Act.In the 1880s and 1890s, the department gathered statistics on markets, crops, and plant diseases.Government publications helped spread information on new farming techniques, including crop rotation, hybridization, and the preservation of water

and

topsoil

.

Hybridization

(def): The crossing of different plants to produce

new varieties

.Slide8

Introductory Unit : “From Sea to Shining Sea” NP 2

New machines and farming techniques increased

farm output

enormously.

The result was

bonanza farms (def): Farms controlled by large businesses and managed by professionals.Specializing in single cash crops raised for sale in massive quantities, bonanza farms promised huge profits to their investors.

The massive output of the western farms created problems as well

:

When the

supply

of a product rose faster than the

demand

, the market became

glutted

and prices fell.

Glut

(def): Substantial oversupply of a product.

To compensate for lower prices, farmers planted even more, causing prices to drop further—An increasing number of farmers were falling further and further into debt.Slide9

Introductory Unit : “From Sea to Shining Sea” NP 2

The gold strike at

Sutter’s Mill

, California in

1849

was the first of several large strikes in the West.The lure of quick wealth brought people of all colors, ethic backgrounds, and levels of education into booming mining towns.In 1859, rumors of gold strikes around Pikes Peak, Colorado brought on a stampede of wagons with the words, “

Pikes Peak or Bust

.”

Also in 1859, a silver strike in Nevada’s famous “

Comstock Lode

” brought on another rush.Slide10

Introductory Unit : “From Sea to Shining Sea” NP 2

Miners, working alone or in small groups, searched for metal that was close to the surface.

Using a technique called

placer mining

, miners shoveled loose dirt into boxes and then ran water over it, causing the heavy minerals to sink to the bottom.

Before long, all of the easily gathered precious metal was gone and by the 1860s, most of the gold and silver that remained in the West was locked in quartz and deeply buried.By this point, most prospectors straggled home, leaving the mining cities that had been bustling

boomtowns

to turn into deserted

ghost towns

.Slide11

Introductory Unit : “From Sea to Shining Sea” NP 2

While the miners were taking advantage of the mineral wealth of the West, another group was taking advantage of its endless acres of grass.

During the 1860s and 1870s,

cattle ranching

boomed.

The destruction of the buffalo and the removal of Indians to reservations emptied the land for grazing cattle.The open plains offered a rancher limitless pasture and, at the same time, the growing population

of the eastern cities drove up the

demand

for beef.Slide12

Introductory Unit : “From Sea to Shining Sea” NP 2

By the end of the Civil War, cattle that sold for $3 to $5 a head in Texas brought $30 to $50 a head in the meat markets of

Chicago

and

St. Louis

.At first, western cattlemen reached these markets by gathering up their herds and driving them across the open range.Railroads provided a fast and easy route to market.The

transcontinental

railroad (which was started in 1863 and ended in May 1869 when the

Union Pacific

from the east joined rails with the

Central Pacific

from the west at

Promontory Point

, Utah) shortened the trip from the East Coast to West Coast from

three months

by boat and stagecoach to

eight days

by railway.

“

Cow towns

,” such as

Abilene

and

Dodge City

in Kansas and

Cheyenne

in Wyoming Territory sprang up along railroad lines and were built specifically for receiving cattle.Slide13

Introductory Unit : “From Sea to Shining Sea” NP 2

The cattle boom ended in the 1880s because of several factors:

In 1874

Joseph Glidden

invented

barbed wire, allowing farmers to fence their land to keep out grazing cattle, causing much conflict between farmers and ranchers. Slowly, the open range

(used by ranchers to graze their herds) began to disappear.

Cattlemen contributed to their own downfall by

overstocking

the market causing beef prices to fall. They also allowed their cattle to

overgraze

the dwindling prairie.

The harsh winters of 1885 through 1887 resulted in some ranchers losing up to

85%

of their cattle to freezing temperatures and starvation. Thousands of ranchers were ruined.