THE WEST

After the Civil War.

Soon after the civil war ended in 1865, thousands of Americans began to move to the west to settle the land. 

The Great movement of settlers continued for almost forty years.

The completion of the railroads to the West opened up vast areas of the region to settlement and economic development. White settlers from the East poured across the Mississippi River to mine, farm and ranch.

From BOOM to... nothing.

People kept looking for a way to make money. Given his fortune, right in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado was where he discovered that there was gold and most of it was underground. Thanks to this, mining became a massive business. The discoveries of valuable minerals such as gold and silver quickly led to turning these lands into "Boomtowns" (prosperous cities), where miners earned good amounts of money but... they gambled. Once all of the ore from from the mines were gone, “boom” became “bust” and boomtowns become ghost towns

The railroad.

Lets remember that in the 1850s, railroad companies searched for a way to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. This was a huge challenge: 1,700 miles of track across the country. Central Pacific started in the west and moved east, Union Pacific would work west and connect to existing railroads. The work was hard and the pay was low. Most of the Union Pacific workers were Irish and African-American immigrants and most of the Central Pacific workers were Chinese immigrants.

Homestead Act.

Passed to encourage settlement west. Up to 160 acres of land were given to a family who agrees to pay a $10 fee and agree to live on the land for five years. Later laws increased the amount of land given. Some women and African Americans claimed homesteads. African Americans would claim land to escape mistreatment in the South. Not all settlers took part in homestead, some bought land themselves for cheap. Some African Americans known as “exodusters” took advantage of the Homestead Act to escape the Jim Crow South.

 Life in the Great Plains.

Wood was scarce as there wasn't many trees. Settlers built their houses out of sod because it was the only material that was available, in addition to the fact that the climates were too extreme, summers with very intense heat and winters with extreme cold. The ground was a problem for our crops, besides the grasshoppers always invaded us. The farmers were called "earth hunters" and due to the situation of the place we were forced to create new agricultural techniques, one of them was Rainfed agriculture that consisted of trapping little moisture in the soil. John Deere invented the steel plow to cut through tough layers of grass