1. Mining and Ranching Opportunities in the West

Miners: In Search of the Big Strike In 1848, landowner John Sutter was overseeing construction of a sawmill on the American River in California. In January of that year, Sutter’s workers unearthed gold near the mill. Though Sutter tried to keep it secret, word quickly spread, and men deserted their work to head for Sutter’s Mill. By the year’s end, gold fever had gripped the entire nation. The California gold rush was on.

In the spring of 1849, around 40,000 people from the East traveled to California, and approximately 40,000 more people boarded steamships headed there. These people, nicknamed “forty-niners,” soon swarmed California’s shores. About nine out of ten were men, most of them young. 

Few of these prospectors and treasure hunters knew anything about mining. Luckily, California’s gold was not embedded in solid rock, it was easily mined using simple tools, such as pans and shovels. However, other prospectors still searched for veins of gold and silver in solid rock. They used hand tools and weak explosives to extract the metal. Their efforts were concentrated on discovering thick veins of metal, that would produce untold riches.

Miners suffered backbreaking work and conditions that were dangerous. However, very few prospectors ever struck it rich. After years of searching, many would say the “Gold is where I ain’t!”

By the early 1850s, most of the gold that could be easily mined in California had been discovered. Individual prospectors eventually went to work for large mining companies that used hydraulic machines to wash away whole hillsides in search of gold. In the process, they damaged the environment, destroying natural habitats, polluting rivers, and leaving behind large piles of debris on which nothing could grow.

Ranchers and Cowboys Find a Home on the Range While miners uncovered the West’s valuable stores of gold, silver, and other minerals, cattle ranchers found opportunity in a different kind of natural resource: grass. Their beef cattle thrived on the abundant grasses and open range of the Great Plains.

Plains cattle ranching had started in Texas prior to the Civil War. Many Texas ranchers went off to fight in the Civil War and never returned. 

Left alone, their cattle multiplied. By the mid-1860s, millions of longhorn cattle roamed wild on the open plains. Some Texans began to round up unbranded cattle to drive, or herd, them north to market.

Growing populations of eastern cities had increased the demand for beef. In the East, ranchers could get $40 for a cow that sold for $5 back in Texas. 

In 1867, cowboys following the Chisholm Trail. They drove longhorns north from Texas, to Kansas. Then, the live cattle were shipped, by train, from Kansas to eastern cities.

Cowboys were able to move more than 1,000 cattle at a time along a trail. African Americans and Mexican Americans made up around 25% of all cowboys.

Cowboys led rough lives, working outdoors and sleeping on the ground in all types of weather. They had to defend their herds against people who wanted to steal their cattle and

American Indian attacks. They also had to watch out for stampedes.

Cattle drives ended in the 1880’s. Once rail lines reached into Texas cattle country and new homesteaders fenced off their farms with barbed wire, cattle drives were ineffective. Terrible blizzards in 1886 and 1887 killed thousands of cattle, forcing many ranchers into bankruptcy. Those who survived destitution chose to fence in their ranches, raising only as many cattle as their land could support.

2. Settling the Great Plains

Opportunities and Challenges on the Great Plains 

The Great Plains was originally a place to pass through when looking for gold in California. Then they were transformed into a shining land of opportunity. In 1862, the Homestead Act encouraged further settlement. The Homestead Act was meant to provide land, called homesteads, to settlers in the West. The Homestead Act provided 160 acres of land for a $10 fee to anyone who was willing to work the land and live on it for five years. Around 600,000 farmers claimed more than 80 million acres of land with the Homestead Act.

The plains offered settlers a fresh start. The settlers knew by the look and smell of the rich soil that their crops would thrive in this land. However, in order to succeed, they would first have to overcome difficult challenges. The first of these challenges was constructing houses on the treeless plains. Without lumber, some homesteaders simply dug a hole in the side of a hill as shelter. Other settlers made houses out of sod. Sod blocks, which were cut out of the ground with a shovel or an ax, formed the walls, and most roofs were made of sod as well. Once farmers could afford lumber delivered by train, they replaced their sod homes with wood-frame houses.

Another challenge was the environment, as the Great Plains region usually has a dry climate. The settlers who arrived in the area came during an abnormally wet period, where the unusual amounts of rain helped crops to flourish. Within 10 years, droughts had returned, the soil dried up, and the crops died. Farmers also had to deal with the winter’s deep cold and blizzard snows. Pests such as grasshoppers chewed for days on everything, destroying entire crops.

Because of these challenges, many farmers left the plains. Others worked to overcome the harsh conditions by using dry-farming techniques. Also, new tools had made farm life

easier. The steel plow, invented in 1837, had simplified cutting through the thick prairie sod in order to prepare it for planting. The mechanical reaper neatly cut and bound sheaves of grain at harvesttime. Windmills pumped water from deep wells for household use and irrigation.

3. Railroads Open the West to Rapid Settlement

The First Transcontinental Railroad Creates Huge Challenges

 In 1861, Congress was considered the creation of a transcontinental railroad, a railroad stretching across to United States. The big problem was over whether to follow a northern or southern route. However, the South’s secession and the Civil War forced a northern route. The transcontinental railroad would be built to unite California with the rest of the United States. 

Building the first transcontinental railroad was challenging. One problem was raising money to build it. The government helped each company by granting it 6,400 acres of land and up to $48,000 in loans for each mile of track laid. Once the laying of rails began, the owners could sell the land to settlers.

Two companies would work to complete the railroad. The Union Pacific and the Central Pacific. The Union Pacific would start in the east and work west. The Central Pacific would start in the west and work east.

The Union Pacific faced conflicts with some of the tribes that lived on the Great Plains. These tribes had been battling the U.S. Army for years, and their attacks on railroad workers sometimes halted construction.

For the Central Pacific, rough terrain was challenge. Not only did the rail line have to pass over, and sometimes through, towering mountain passes, but it also had to bridge deep canyons. On some days, progress was measured in inches. 

Working on the Railroad: Jobs and Hardships for Immigrants

Ultimately, the two railroad companies owed much of their success to immigrant labor. Both companies needed thousands of workers, but had trouble finding them due to the Civil War and the gold rush. The Union Pacific used immigrants coming into the country from Europe. Irish immigrants made up a majority of the workforce.

The Central Pacific decided to hire workers from China. The company advertised in China, promising workers good pay. By 1868, the Central Pacific was employing approximately 10,000 Chinese workers, who were paid lower wages than white workers and were targets of racism.

Working on the railroad was both strenuous and dangerous. Some workers were killed in Indian attacks, dynamite used to blast tunnels through the Sierra Nevada resulted in injuries and deaths, extreme cold in winter left many workers with frostbite, and snow avalanches killed others.

Railroads Become Lifelines in the West Both companies eventually overcame these great obstacles, converging lines on May 10, 1869 at Promontory Point, Utah. The completion of the railroad reduced travel time between the Pacific and Atlantic coasts from four months to ten days. To mark the occasion, two officials, one from each company, drove ceremonial spikes of gold and silver into the railroad ties.

Once the first transcontinental railroad had been completed, railroad construction continued elsewhere with a fury. This rapid expansion made many railroad owners extremely wealthy.

Towns soon developed along the routes. In addition, railroads served the transportation needs of new industries, such as mining and lumbering. Perhaps most importantly, they united East and West.

On May 10, 1869, workers completed the first railroad that would span the continent. This picture displays the celebration that took place as the Union and Central Pacific lines were joined together at Promontory Summit, Utah, enabling the start of passenger service from Omaha to San Francisco.

African Americans See the Plains as the “Promised Land” 

The women and men who settled the West represented a broad range of Americans. Many of these settlers were native-born white farm families from the Midwest, others were emigrants from Europe. Another portion of settlers were former slaves looking for the opportunity to own their own land.

After the Civil War, many African Americans fled the South in search of better lives elsewhere. Some freedmen worked as cowboys in Texas, while others joined the army, helping to protect settlers. However, most African Americans who traveled west became farmers.

Former slaves who left the South to move west became known as Exodusters. Exodusters, a direct reference to Exodus, the second book of the Bible, cites the Israelites’ escape from slavery in Egypt and the beginning of their journey to the “Promised Land.”

Offered the opportunity to succeed or fail on their own terms as independent farmers, thousands of African Americans braved the trek to the West. Despite their rising numbers and the independence of owning land, African Americans in the West were still plagued by racism. 

4. Indian Wars Shatter Tribal CulturesTo many people, the railroad represented great progress, but for the American Indians,

it threatened their ways of life. The railroad crossed through their hunting grounds. The trains disturbed the bison, their main source of food, clothing, and shelter. It also brought ranchers, farmers, and soldiers to their hunting grounds. In response, many tribes fought the railroad. Their battle for survival represented the latest round of what are known as the Indian Wars.

Cultures Clash on the Great Plains 

For many Americans moving west, the Indian tribes were a problem. Many tribes refused to change their customs to the settlers’ culture. When settlers began to live in the West after the Civil War, they fought with the tribes. As settlers moved westward, they killed millions of bison, endangering a vital part of tribal culture. Many tribes refused to give up their homelands without a fight, and thus their warriors began attacking settlers.

The federal government sought to keep most western tribes on reservations, or areas of federal land reserved for American Indian tribes. Federal officials promised to protect these tribes. However, instead of protecting them, the government oftentimes assisted prospectors and settlers who invaded reservations. 

Many tribes, from the Apaches and Comanches in the south to the Sioux, Cheyennes, and Arapahos in the north, refused to stay within reservations. Bands of raiders moved out onto the plains, where they fought to stop the expansion of settlements. 

Adaptation and Efforts to Assimilate American Indians The settlement of the West was disastrous for large numbers of American Indians. Many died as a result of violence, disease, and poverty, and others still clung to a miserable existence on reservations.

The survivors struggled to adapt to their changed circumstance. Some attempted agriculture—the eastern tribes that had been removed to Oklahoma became successful farmers—and many tribes established their own government and schools.

At the same time, the U.S. government adopted policies aimed at speeding the assimilation, or absorption, of American Indians into the dominant white settler culture. Federal officials set up about two dozen boarding schools to educate American Indians in “white men’s ways.” Congress furthered the assimilation push by enacting the Dawes Act of 1887. Under this law, a tribe could no longer own reservation lands as a group. Instead, the government began distributing land to individuals within a tribe. Each family was granted its own plot of land, which it could hold or sell. 

In 1850, American Indians lived freely in the western half of the United States. Over time, the federal government forced them onto smaller and smaller reservations, although many tribes fought to save their lands. President Rutherford B. Hayes admitted in 1777, “Many, if not most, of our Indian wars have had their origin in broken promises and acts of injustice upon our part.”

As part of its assimilation policy, the federal government established boarding schools for American Indian children. The Director of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania stated that his goal was to “kill the Indian and save the man.”-

Settlement of the West in the mid- to late 1800s brought opportunities for many Americans but also sparked conflict as settlers invaded American Indian homelands.Mining Gold-rush fever galvanized a rush of prospectors to move West. Although few

fortunes were made, this migration helped populate California and other western regions.Ranching Following the Chisholm Trail and other routes, cowboys herded cattle north to be shipped to meatpacking plants in cities like Chicago.

Transcontinental railroad Building the first rail line to California was a huge undertaking that relied on government support and immigrant labor. The spread of railroads across the West brought wealth to railroad barons and opened the region to settlement.Indian wars The tribes on the Great Plains fought to preserve their way of life. To prevent conflict and open lands for settlement, the government moved tribes onto reservations. Through the Dawes Act, it also worked to assimilate American Indians into white culture.Homestead Act The Homestead Act brought more farmers to the Great Plains, including African Americans who called themselves Exodusters. Farmers in the plains region faced such challenges as crop-eating insects and drought.Protests by farmers Burdened by falling crop prices and large debts, farmers formed political organizations such as the Grange. Their protest movements gave rise to the Populist Party.