AMERICAN HISTORY

 Major Stephen H. Long called the Great Plains region “The Great American Desert”  He believed the area was “unfit for cultivation and … uninhabitable by a people depending on agriculture…”  NEW LEGISLATION  Congress passed three acts in 1862  “The Homestead Act”

 --Allowed any head of household over the age of 21 to claim 160 acres of land  --Home must be built  --improvements must be made  --live on the land for 5 years  Full ownership would be given after this time period  Nearly 2,000,000 people applied for land claims  Most good land was claimed before 1900

 The last homesteader claimed land in 1988!  “Pacific Railway Act” (1862)  --gave land to railroad companies to encourage construction of railroads and telegraph lines  “Morrill Act” (1862)  --gave land to states to provide colleges for “agriculture and mechanic arts.”  Some states sold the land to fund education  First government attempt to aid higher education  Iowa State University – first land grant college in USA (1858)

 RAILROADS ENCOURAGE SETTLEMENT  Within a few years of the Pacific Railway Act, the government gave over 125 million acres of land to railroads  State and local government contributed and additional 100 million acres  Railroads made profits by selling some land to settlers  Railroads placed ads encouraging people to settle in the west

 —40,000 homestead claims filed in Montana  THE OKLAHOMA LAND RUN OF 1889  2 million acres of land in Oklahoma unclaimed by any Indian population  April 22, 1889—thousands of people lined up along the perimeter of the unclaimed land  At 12:00 noon, 50,000 people rushed into the Oklahoma interior to stake their claim

 Between 1889 & 1895, five different land runs brought countless settlers to live in Oklahoma  Not everyone who rushed to claim land were prepared to settle  Some had few provisions and no money  Many hopefully settlers became quickly discouraged and left because they couldn’t survive until the first crop came in

 CLOSING OF THE FRONTIER  Frontier existed when there was a population of 2 people per square mile  1890—U.S. Census Bureau effectively declared the frontier closed to future settlement

 After the Civil War, people moving west belonged to 3 major groups:  --white Americans from the East  --African Americans from the South  --immigrants from foreign countries  WHITE SETTLERS  Most whites came from states in the Mississippi Valley

 AFRICAN AMERICAN SETTLERS  1870s—Massive migration west by African American  Some inspired by Benjamin “Pap” Singleton – community builder & former slave  Others fled because of violence and oppression from KKK and other groups  Rumors spread that the US Government would open up Kansas for African Americans but that was false.

 15,000 African Americans moved to Kansas within a year searching for a more peaceful life.  These settlers became known as EXODUSTERS  Tens of thousands of these Exodusters left the south and settled in KS, MO, IN, and IL.  EUROPEAN SETTLERS  Settlers from Norway, Sweden, and Finland poured into the northern plains in the 1870s

 Many Irish that had come to build railroads decided to stay and settle on the plains  Russian Menonites brought farming experience  Huge numbers of Germans came and many settled in the central part of Texas  CHINESE SETTLERS  1880s—Chinese immigrants who came for the gold rush and railroad-building turned to farming

 Chinese brought innovative farming techniques and helped to start California’s fruit industry  Most ended up as farm laborers because laws banned Chinese from owning land

 Journey west was expensive and full of hardships  After staking a claim to land there were new challenges:  1) harsh climate – winters were bitterly cold along with snowstorms; summers were fiercely hot, causing crops to shrivel and die  2) water was scarce forcing people to dig wells and install windmill-driven pumps

 In the Southwest, settlers used Hispanic and Native American irrigation techniques  3) no lumber to build houses  Some early settlers built DUGOUTS – shelters built into the sides of hills  They soon replaced dugouts with sturdy sod houses  FARMING IN A NEW ENVIRONMENT  New farming equipment helped settlers succeed

 James Oliver developed a new plow with sharper edges to plow fields with less effort  Combine harvesters cut wheat, separated the grains from the stalks, and removed the husks from the grains in one operation  This equipment was expensive and many small farmers went in debt to farm it.  FARMING AS BIG BUSINESS  Large companies saw a business opportunity on the Plains

BBONANZA FARMS created TThese farms operated like factories, with expensive machinery, professional managers, and laborers who performed specialized tasks OOwners of these farms realized great profits during good growing seasons BBad growing seasons meant trouble trying to pay for machinery and pay workers SSmall family farmers handled the boom-and-bust cycles better than big corporate farms BBy the 1890s most big farms had broken up. TTHE END