9/10/14 THE GILDED AGE UNIT 1
The
West
E X PA N S I O N A N D S E T T L E M E N T O F N E W A R E A S H E L P S H A P E A
N AT I O N ’ S I D E N T I T Y D U E T O I N T E R A C T I O N W I T H T H E
ENVIRONMENT AND OTHER SOCIETIES.
TODAY YOU WILL BE ABLE TO ANALYZE THE IMPACT OF
PHYSICAL AND HUMAN GEOGRAPHIC FACTORS WITH THE
SETTLEMENT OF THE WEST
AGENDA
•  Warm Up
•  Quick Write
•  Classroom Open Discussion over expansion into the West
•  Partners: Look at the topics presented and use the
book to help you find information on each topic.
•  Groups will be assigned one topic and your will
make predictions over your topic
1 9/10/14 TODAY YOU WILL BE ABLE TO ANALYZE THE IMPACT
OF PHYSICAL AND HUMAN GEOGRAPHIC FACTORS
WITH THE SETTLEMENT OF THE WEST
•  What does the term THE WEST mean to you?
•  How did the environment (human and physical
geography) impact settlement of the West, especially
the Great Plains and the Klondike Gold Rush area/
region?
MOVEMENT WESTWARD AND THE GILDED
AGE
•  Factory system
•  Population shift
to cities
•  Inventions/
industrialism
•  Immigration
•  Urbanization
•  Political
corruption and
political
machines
•  Entrepreneurship
(growth of big
business)
•  Philanthropy
•  Indian policies
•  Labor unions
•  Growth of
railroad/
transcontinental
•  Cattle industry
boom
•  Westward
movement and
the Homestead
Act
•  Laissez-faire
2 9/10/14 OUTCOME: WESTWARD
EXPANSION
R E C O N S T R U C T I O N A N D W E S T WA R D
E X PA N S I O N
Agenda
•  Warm Up
•  Yesterday
•  Notes
SETTLEMENT OF THE GREAT
PLAINS
•  Human factors
•  Plains Indians were the earliest settlers
•  Innovations (steel plow) made it easier to break the dense soil
and farm the land
•  Homestead Act encouraged settlement
•  Physical factors
•  Located between the South and Midwest regions to the east
and the Rocky Mountains to the west
•  Greatest extremes in climate of any region in the US
•  Cold winters with blizzards
•  Hot, dry winds in summer
•  Because of consistency of topography the land was ideal for
farming
3 9/10/14 WESTWARD EXPANSION
1.  Setting the Stage (Background on the West)
a.  Americans believed in the idea of Manifest Destiny, the idea
that it was their God given right to expand westward to the Pacific
Ocean and to Mexico
WESTWARD EXPANSION
b.  President Thomas Jefferson bought the Louisiana Purchase from
Napoleon Bonaparte of France in 1803 for $15 million
c.  Between 1804 to 1806, explorers Lewis and Clark were
commissioned by President Jefferson to explore west to the Pacific
coast
4 9/10/14 WESTWARD EXPANSION
f. 
The United States now stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific,
however, many Native American tribes lived on these
newly obtained pieces of land and had called this land
home for hundreds of years
WESTWARD EXPANSION
2.  Motivations to settle the West
a.  The California gold rush of 1849 & the discovery of gold in
Colorado in 1858 sparked a wave of settlers to the west hoping
to literally strike gold
b.  Mining towns were filthy and included fortune seekers of every
kind including Irish, German, Polish, Chinese, and African
Americans
c.  Free land! The Homestead Act of 1862 offered 160 acres to
citizens; 600,000 families took advantage of this offer
5 9/10/14 WESTWARD EXPANSION
3.  The Transcontinental Railroad
a.  The federal government offered 170 million acres in land grants
to railroads between 1850-1871
b.  Land grants were pieces of land given by the federal
government to encourage railroad companies to build more
railroads westward
WESTWARD EXPANSION
f. 
Both companies relied heavily on foreign labor such as Irish and
mostly Chinese workers
6 9/10/14 WESTWARD EXPANSION
g.  The Central Pacific used unstable nitroglycerin to blast
through the difficult terrain of the Sierra Nevada mountains
h.  Both companies reached Promontory Point, Utah by 1869
where a golden spike was driven to hail the completion of
the railroad
i.  Fifteen years later, the US had five transcontinental railroads
j. 
The railroads significantly shrunk the size of the US and allowed for
settlers to migrate west more quickly and efficiently
WESTWARD EXPANSION
4.  Life in the West
a.  Trees were often scarce so settlers built their homes called sod
homes, or soddies, from the land itself
7 9/10/14 WESTWARD EXPANSION
4.  Life in the West
d.  Frontier settlers faced many hardships such as droughts,
floods, fires, blizzards, locust plagues, and occasional raids by
outlaws and
Native Americans
WESTWARD EXPANSION
4.  Life in the West
d.  Frontier settlers faced many hardships such as droughts,
floods, fires, blizzards, locust plagues, and occasional raids by
outlaws and
Native Americans
8 9/10/14 * After Civil War - beef was rare & expensive;
RRs could carry rounded-up longhorns to
markets in the East.
* Long drive - cattle was driven (herded) long
distances to
railheads
(RR stations)
& shipped
East.
* Open range - vast area of gov t-owned
grassland.
* Chisholm Trail - Famous long drive route
Abilene, Kansas.
* Range Wars broke
out when sheep herds
moved onto open
range & also when
farmers moved in.
from Texas to
* Barbed wire - enabled huge
areas to be fenced in cheaply.
(Can you think of another advantage
to using barbed wire on the Great
Plains?)
9 9/10/14 Why did long drives end?
* Fencing-in of the open range.
* Brits & European investors poured $$$
into
cattle business
oversupply
prices fell & ranchers went bankrupt!
* Blizzards in 1886-87; killed
huge numbers of herds.
Result……. Fenced-in ranches
made long drives difficult.
Wheat Belt - eastern edge of Great Plains.
* New farming techniques.
-- Dry farming - planted seeds deep for
moisture.
-- Steel plows (John Deere), seed drills,
reapers, & threshers.
-- Mechanical reapers - faster harvest.
* Bonanza farms - huge wheat farms up to
50,000 acres; often owned by big
corporations.
10 9/10/14 Problem:
Better farming techniques
•  Oversupply of crop
Resulted in
•  A drop in crop prices
•  Farmers had to mortgage the land
•  Often led to farm foreclosures by
the banks because farmers could
not pay off their mortgages.
TODAY YOU WILL BE ABLE TO ANALYZE THE IMPACT OF
PHYSICAL AND HUMAN GEOGRAPHIC FACTORS WITH
THE SETTLEMENT OF THE WEST
Pair up and complete task 1.
Next we will gather in 6 different to address the back
of the paper Please read the directions on each
worksheet before you begin.
Guiding
questions
for pairs
Fill in
notes
as
groups
11