1. Chapter 14 “Looking to the West”
Section 3 “Mining, Ranching, & Farming” Questions

2. Vocabulary placer mining long drive homesteader soddie dry farming
bonanza farm
Turner thesis
stereotype

3. The Spread of Western Mining
1. How did mining spread in the West?
rumors of gold “everywhere you stick your shovel”
Rich mines worth millions of dollars
Gold Rush
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4. 2. What technologies gradually replaced placer mining?
A technique called placer mining
diverted streams and dug into the exposed beds.
tunneled into mountains and plunged into rickety mine shafts
Huge drills replaced pickaxes.
Hydraulic pumps
dynamite in the 1870s

5. The Cattle Boom
3) What caused the western cattle boom?
After the Civil War, 5 million cattle roaming wild, making available ample supplies of beef.
cookbooks began snubbing pork as “difficult to digest” and “unwholesome,”

6. 4) Describe the rise of cow towns
built specifically for receiving cattle.
Near railroads
Cow towns were a truly wild part of the West
Most residents not year round

7. A Cowboy’s Life: Cattle Drive on the Chisholm Trail
7) What was life like for a cowboy on the Chisholm Trail?

8. Farming the Plains Most people built either a dugout or a soddie.
5) What hardships did homesteaders face?
Most people built either a dugout or a soddie.
Grasshoppers, locusts ate crops
Rattlesnakes, Disease carried by insects
Falling crop prices created rising farm debt.
Droughts

9. 6) Describe the impact of new technologies and other factors on small entrepreneurs in mining, ranching, and farming
Mining: hydraulics pumps, dynamite
Able to reach deep deposits
Ranching: railroads (transport), Pure breeds from east (heavier cattle), Barbed Wire (keep cattle near farms with little lumber)
Farming: Dry farming, Harrows, Steam-powered threshers, steel plow, (Grow more crops in drier climate and increase production)

10. Review: Prepare your Response Cards

11. The cattle boom and the spread of ranching in the early 1800s led to the near-destruction of
A) the Native Americans. B) the pork industry. C) the indigenous wheat crops on the plains. D) the buffalo herds.

12. D) the buffalo herds.

13. One reason western mining was taken over by large corporations was that
A) individual miners could not afford modern mining equipment. B) the price of gold went down. C) the government passed laws against searching for precious metals. D) miners took all the gold from the West during the gold rush.

14. A) individual miners could not afford modern mining equipment.

15. What was a soddie?
A) a farmer who refused to work and relied on his neighbors B) a new type of plow that revolutionized western farming C) a traditional lullaby sung by cattlemen along the Chisholm trail D) a small home on the plains, built out of blocks of turf

16. D) a small home on the plains, built out of blocks of turf

17. Which of the following groups taught Americans cattle ranching techniques in the early 1800s?
A) Native Americans B) African Americans C) settlers D) Mexicans

18. D) Mexicans

19. Placer mining involved which of the following techniques?
A) blasting mountains with high-speed water jets B) sorting loose dirt from ore with water in boxes C) tunneling into mountains with pneumatic drills D) dynamiting ore out of hillsides

20. B) sorting loose dirt from ore with water in boxes

21. Why did cowboys drive their herds of cattle north from Texas along the Chisholm and other trails?
A) to get them to Kansas railway stations B) to move them to better grazing lands in Oklahoma C) to trade them with Native Americans in Indian Territory D) to escape Mexican ranchers moving into Texas from the south

22. A) to get them to Kansas railway stations

23. What was the nation's first national park?
A) the Grand Canyon B) Yellowstone C) Yosemite D) Glacier Bay

24. Yellowstone

25. One sign that the frontier no longer existed was that
A) many territories refused to become states. B) most unsettled lands had been broken up by settlements. C) the buffalo continued to dominate the Great Plains. D) many farms were bought up by corporations.

26. B) most unsettled lands had been broken up by settlements.

27. Which of the following statements best describes life for settlers in the West?
A) Settlers had an easy time farming western lands. B) Most women worked outside the home. C) Settlers survived by working together. D) Farmers enjoyed the mild western climate.

28. C) Settlers survived by working together.