1. Essential Question: Warm-Up Question:
What economic, political, & migratory factors led to the end of the western frontier by 1890?
Warm-Up Question:
For each era, define what the “West” was & what role the West played in American life: (a) 1750, (b) 1800, (c)1850
Lesson Plan for Thursday, November 20, 2008: Warm-up question, The American West notes

2. America After the Civil War: 1870-1900
Industrialization & Urbanization
Ranching, Mining, & Farming
Reconstruction &
Rise of Jim Crow Segregation

3. America in the Gilded Age: 1870-1900
The South:
By 1877, the South was recovering from the Civil War but was no longer forced to “reconstruct”
Industry was regional by 1890: (a) NE had 85% of industry, (b) the sparsely-settled West provided raw materials for industry, & (c) the South was still recovering from war (made tobacco, iron & textiles; but ½ as many manufactured goods as NY state)

4. The “New South”?
Sharecropping
We won’t discuss much about the South in this unit because, when Reconstruction ended in 1877, few significant economic or political changes took place until the 1940s
“Jim Crow” reigned supreme as whites legally segregated the South into 2 distinct societies

5. America in the Gilded Age: 1870-1900
The North:
Experienced a “2nd Industrial Revolution,” mass immigration, & urbanization

6. Railroads, steel, & oil companies formed America’s first monopolies
American industry & urbanization grew

7. America in the Gilded Age: 1870-1900
The West:
Manifest Destiny continued after 1865 as miners homesteaders, & ranchers headed West

8. Established new states & closed the frontier by 1890
The United States by 1890
Washington
North Dakota
Montana
Idaho
Established new states & closed the frontier by 1890
South Dakota
Colorado
Wyoming

9. ..but this came at the expense of Native Americans
Western raw materials fueled eastern factories
Crushed Native Americans

10. Settlement of the West

11. The Mining Bonanza
Mining was the 1st magnet to attract settlers to the West
CA (1849) started the gold rush, but strikes in Pikes Peak, CO & Carson River Valley, NV (1859) set off wild migrations to the West:
Comstock Lode = $306 million
John Mackay’s Big Bonanza made him richest man in world
John Mackay earned $25 a minute from his gold/silver lode in Sierra Mountains

12. Mining Regions of the West
Created need for local gov’t, law enforcement, sanitation, businesses, prostitutes
Corporations had the expensive machinery (“hydraulic mining techniques”) to extract most of the gold in the West
Individual “placer miners” took little skill or money to start, but could not reach deep lodes
Mining Regions of the West ;
Discoveries of gold & silver led to overnight mining towns

13. Mining Bonanza Pacific Chivalry:
¼ to ½ of the mining population was foreign born:
Latin American miners brought experience & new techniques
Chinese brought a tireless ethic
Led to hostility & riots:
Foreign Miners’ Act in 1852 charged a monthly mining fee
Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 suspended Chinese immigration
"Courts of Justice Closed to Chinese
Extra Taxes to 'Yellowjack'"
Pacific Chivalry:
“Encouragement to Chinese Immigration”

14. A cattle bought for $4 in Texas sold for $40 in Kansas
In the 1860s, cattle ranching boomed
The Cattle Bonanza
Ranchers used the “open range” to graze longhorns
By 1867, ranchers started using trains to ship cattle to Chicago

15. The Cattle Bonanza
½ of all cowboys were black & ¼ were Mexican
By 1880, the “open range” was ending:
Wheat growers, homesteaders, & barbed wire blocked the range
Many switched to raising sheep
But “range wars” erupted over grazing rights between cowboys & “sheep-boys”