The Transcontinental Railroad and The West

The West When geographers study reasons for major migrations, they look at what they call push-pull factors-events and conditions that either force (push) people to move elsewhere or strongly attract (pull) them to do so. Here are some push-pull factors for moving west. Pull Factors Government incentives Pacific Railway Act Morrill Land-Grant Act Homestead Act Private Property Miners Ranchers Farmers Push Factors Crowding back East Displaced farmers Former slaves Eastern farmland expensive Ethnic and religious repression in Europe Haven for outlaws

Manifest Destiny

Homestead Act 1862 Small fee ($1.25- $2.50/acre) settlers received up to160 acres if: 21 yrs old Citizens or immigrants filing for citizenship (no traitors “confederates”) Minimum sized house Lived on claim 6 months out of the year Farm the land for 5 years in a row 372,000 farms 80 million acres

Pacific Railway Acts 1862, 1864 Large land grants to Union Pacific RR and Central Pacific RR Goal to Build a RR linking E&W coast 175 million acres Met at Promonotory Point Utah

Morrill Land Grant Act 1862 State governments received millions of acres of land to: Sell Create land grant colleges for agricultural and mechanical arts

Settlers From Far and Wide White settlers mainly from the Mississippi Valley where land was expensive and difficult to obtain. It was primarily middle-class farmers and businesspeople who could afford to move west in search of a new start. After the Civil War, thousands of African Americans rode or walked westward, often fleeing violence and exploitation. German-speaking immigrants arrived seeking farmland. They brought the Lutheran religion with its emphasis on hard work and education. Irish, Italians, European Jews, and Chinese settled in concentrated communities on the West coast. They took jobs in mining and railroad construction that brought them to the American interior. Chinese immigrants came for the Gold Rush and stayed as farm laborers and building the RR from the west.

Benjamin Singleton “Exodusters” Led groups of southern blacks on a mass “Exodus,” a trek inspired by the biblical account of the Israelites’ flight from Egypt to a prophesied homeland. Hence, the settlers called themselves Exodusters. Some 50,000 or more Exodusters migrated west.

Exodusters :

Homesteader Homes Built with available materials (sod) Small Functional as a shelter

Homesteader lifestyle Difficult Subsistence farmers Some livestock Grasshoppers Storms/fire Distance Lack of building materials

Storytellers of the Great Plains Willa Cather Inspired by the West and life on the Plains Oh Pioneers My Antonia

Oh Pioneers Hardship on the Plains It was facing this vast hardness that the boy's mouth had become so bitter; because he felt that men were too weak to make any mark here, that the land wanted to be let alone, to preserve its own fierce strength, its peculiar, savage kind of beauty, its uninterrupted mournfulness. The settlers sat about on the wooden sidewalks in the little town and told each other that the country was never meant for men to live in; the thing to do was to get back to Iowa, to Illinois, to any place that had been proved habitable.