Developments in the West

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Developments in the West
John Gast, American Progress, 1872
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The West

• Idea of the Great American Desert
• This image begins to change in the 1840s
• By the end of the CW, the far West had been
  redefined as the frontier
• Literally, brink

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Frontier thesis

• Frederick Jackson Turner
• University of WI historian
• The Significance of the Frontier in American
  History (1893)
• Frontier as a moving line meeting point b/n
  savagery and civilization
• More process than place
• Existence of a frontier as the most important
  fact of US history
• Where democratic values were renewed
• Articulated at a moment when the frontier
  appeared to have closed
• 1890 US census

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New Western History

• Debunks image of the open frontier
• Emphasis on conquest (rather than settlement)
• Questions triumphalism
• Points to greed, conflict, ecological devastation
• Western individualism as a self-serving myth
• Region tied to national/international markets
• Highly dependent on federal government
• West not a respite from industrial society
• No great social mobility wage labor prevalent
• West as multicultural
• Site of contact/conflict
• Questioning Western exceptionalism

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Anglo-American migration

• Between 1840-67, 350,000 Americans emigrated to
  the Pacific region
• Travel by wagon generally took 6-8 months
• First traveled on the Overland Trail
• Westward movement mostly a family affair
• Issue of skewed sex ratios has been
  overemphasized (except for gold rush mining
  communities)
• By 1860, the sex ratio in frontier communities
  was basically the same as in the East

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Who went, and why?

• Neither very rich, nor very poor
• Families needed money for supplies
• Most from the Midwest and upper South
• Decision made by men goal almost always economic
  advancement
• Women often resisted

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Nancy Kelsey (1823-1896)

• First white woman to cross Nevada and go to
  California (in 1841). She was 18 years old at the
  time, had a six-month-old baby girl in her arms,
  and by the end of the trip was pregnant with her
  second child.
• Where my husband goes I can go. I can better
  stand the hardships of the journey than the
  anxieties for an absent husband.

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Covered Wagon in Oregon
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Trails to the West
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Transportation

• Federal government surveying railway routes as
  early as 1853
• Sectional crisis delayed construction
• No comfortable way to travel
• Trips west 6-8 months
• Pacific Railroad Act (1862)
• Transcontinental RR completed in 1869
• Trips west took 10 days
• By 1883, three more transcontinental routes
  completed

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Transcontinental Railroad, 1869
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Image showing Chinese workers, who were excluded
from the most widely circulated photo
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Famous photo, May 10, 1869,commemorating meeting
of Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads at
Promontory Point, UT
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Mining

• CA gold rush
• 1848 non-Native pop. 14,000
• 1852 non-Native pop. 220,000
• Impact on Native Americans
• Forced labor
• Vigilante violence
• 1850s Native pop. 150,00
• 1870s Native pop. 30,000

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Mining industry

• Extractive mindset
• Prospectors devised their own codes
• Passed measures barring Mexicans, Chinese,
  African-Americans from the fields
• Placer stage short-lived
• Mining quickly became a consolidated industry

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Chinese immigration

• Large numbers first came during the gold rush
• 1880 200,000 Chinese 10 of CA pop.
• 1852 Foreign Miners Tax
• To exclude Chinese and Mexicans
• Second wave of immigration related to RR
• 1870s Rise of anti-coolie clubs
• Racism fear of cheap labor
• 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act
• Banned Chinese immigration for 10 years
• Barred Chinese in the US from becoming
  naturalized citizens

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Cattle ranching

• Peaked in the 1870s
• Abetted by virtual extermination of buffalo
• New methods for curing buffalo hides
• Killing buffalo as sport
• Development of railways created new market for
  beef
• Long Drive
• Land initially treated as free commodity
• Crisis in cattle industry (1880s)
• Prices began to decline in 1882
• 1886-87 terrible winter
• Conflict with farmers
• Barbed wire invented in 1874

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Cowboy

• Many were Confederate Army Veterans
• Around a quarter were black 10-15 Mexicans
• Very brutal conditions

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Farming

• B/n 1870-1900
• More land came under cultivation than at any time
  in the previous 250 years
• Spurred by the 1862 Homestead Act
• Enabled settler to obtain 160 acres of land for
  free if they lived on it for 5 years
• Laws included aliens who filed naturalization
  papers
• B/n 1862-1900 400,000 homesteads claimed
• 1870s-80s Plains states expressed high levels of
  rainfall