Americas Westward Expansion Trails

Download or read book America's Westward Expansion Trails written by Charles River Editors and published by . This book was released on 2019-12-18 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes excerpts of contemporary accounts *Includes a bibliography for further reading The Lewis and Clark Expedition, notwithstanding its merits as a feat of exploration, was also the first tentative claim on the vast interior and the western seaboard of North America by the United States. It set in motion the great movement west that began almost immediately with the first commercial overland expedition funded by John Jacob Astor's Pacific Fur Company and would continue with the establishment of the Oregon Trail and California Trail. The westward movement of Americans in the 19th century was one of the largest and most consequential migrations in history, and as it so happened, the paths were being formalized and coming into use right around the time gold was discovered in the lands that became California in January 1848. Located thousands of miles away from the country's power centers on the East Coast at the time, the announcement came a month before the Mexican-American War had ended, and among the very few Americans that were near the region at the time, many of them were Army soldiers who were participating in the war and garrisoned there. San Francisco was still best known for being a Spanish military and missionary outpost during the colonial era, and only a few hundred called it home. Mexico's independence, and its possession of those lands, had come only a generation earlier. The most well-known is the Oregon Trail, which was not a single trail but a network of paths that began at one of four "jumping off" points. The eastern section of the Oregon Trail, which followed the Missouri River through Kansas, Nebraska, and Wyoming, was shared by people traveling along the California, Bozeman, and Mormon Trails. These trails branched off at various points, and the California Trail diverged from the Oregon Trail at Fort Hall in southern Idaho. From there, the Oregon Trail moved northward, along the Snake River, then through the Blue Mountains to Fort Walla Walla. From there, travelers would cross the prairie before reaching the Methodist mission at The Dalles, which roughly marked the end of the trail. As it so happened, many of the paths were being formalized and coming into use right around the time gold was discovered in the lands that became California in January 1848. Located thousands of miles away from the country's power centers on the East Coast at the time, the announcement came a month before the Mexican-American War had ended, and among the very few Americans that were near the region at the time, many of them were Army soldiers who were participating in the war and garrisoned there. San Francisco was still best known for being a Spanish military and missionary outpost during the colonial era, and only a few hundred called it home. Mexico's independence, and its possession of those lands, had come only a generation earlier. The announcement of gold brought an influx of an estimated 90,000 "Forty-Niners" to the region in 1849, hailing from other parts of America and even as far away as Asia. All told, an estimated 300,000 people would come to California over the next few years, as men dangerously trekked thousands of miles in hopes of making a fortune, and in a span of months, San Francisco's population exploded, making it one of the first mining boomtowns to truly spring up in the West. This was a pattern that would repeat itself across the West anytime a mineral discovery was made, from the Southwest and Tombstone to the Dakotas and Deadwood. While many would look back romantically at the various trails over time, 19th century Americans were all too happy and eager for the Transcontinental Railroad to help speed their passage west and render overland paths obsolete. This book examines how the paths were forged, the people most responsible for them, and the most famous events associated with the trails' history.

Download or read book The Oregon Trail and Westward Expansion written by Kristin Marciniak and published by Cherry Lake. This book was released on 2013-08-01 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book relays the factual details of the Oregon Trail and the United States' westward expansion in the 1800s. The narrative provides multiple accounts of the event, and readers learn details through the point of view of a pioneer, a Native American in a territory crossed by the trail, and a U.S. soldier at a government outpost. The text offers opportunities to compare and contrast various perspectives in the text while gathering and analyzing information about an historical event.

Download or read book Manifest Destinies written by Steven E. Woodworth and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-11-02 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sweeping history of the 1840s, Manifest Destinies captures the enormous sense of possibility that inspired America’s growth and shows how the acquisition of western territories forced the nation to come to grips with the deep fault line that would bring war in the near future. Steven E. Woodworth gives us a portrait of America at its most vibrant and expansive. It was a decade in which the nation significantly enlarged its boundaries, taking Texas, New Mexico, California, and the Pacific Northwest; William Henry Harrison ran the first modern populist campaign, focusing on entertaining voters rather than on discussing issues; prospectors headed west to search for gold; Joseph Smith founded a new religion; railroads and telegraph lines connected the country’s disparate populations as never before. When the 1840s dawned, Americans were feeling optimistic about the future: the population was growing, economic conditions were improving, and peace had reigned for nearly thirty years. A hopeful nation looked to the West, where vast areas of unsettled land seemed to promise prosperity to anyone resourceful enough to take advantage. And yet political tensions roiled below the surface; as the country took on new lands, slavery emerged as an irreconcilable source of disagreement between North and South, and secession reared its head for the first time. Rich in detail and full of dramatic events and fascinating characters, Manifest Destinies is an absorbing and highly entertaining account of a crucial decade that forged a young nation’s character and destiny.

Download or read book Paper Trails written by Cameron Blevins and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-04 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking history of how the US Post made the nineteenth-century American West. There were five times as many post offices in the United States in 1899 than there are McDonald's restaurants today. During an era of supposedly limited federal government, the United States operated the most expansive national postal system in the world. In this cutting-edge interpretation of the late nineteenth-century United States, Cameron Blevins argues that the US Post wove together two of the era's defining projects: western expansion and the growth of state power. Between the 1860s and the early 1900s, the western United States underwent a truly dramatic reorganization of people, land, capital, and resources. It had taken Anglo-Americans the better part of two hundred years to occupy the eastern half of the continent, yet they occupied the West within a single generation. As millions of settlers moved into the region, they relied on letters and newspapers, magazines and pamphlets, petitions and money orders to stay connected to the wider world. Paper Trails maps the spread of the US Post using a dataset of more than 100,000 post offices, revealing a new picture of the federal government in the West. The western postal network bore little resemblance to the civil service bureaucracies typically associated with government institutions. Instead, the US Post grafted public mail service onto private businesses, contracting with stagecoach companies to carry the mail and paying local merchants to distribute letters from their stores. These arrangements allowed the US Post to rapidly spin out a vast and ephemeral web of postal infrastructure to thousands of distant places. The postal network's sprawling geography and localized operations forces a reconsideration of the American state, its history, and the ways in which it exercised power.

Download or read book Westward Expansion written by Ray Allen Billington and published by . This book was released on 1963 with total page 893 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Westward Expansion written by Greg Roza and published by Gareth Stevens Publishing LLLP. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There were many reasons for Americans to move west in the 1800s. The gold rush, religious movements, new farmland, and even a transcontinental railroad brought people from across the country to settle. This valuable resource highlights the major causes and effects of America’s push westward—from the Erie Canal to the rise of cowboys. With the help of detailed photographs, readers discover the events that expanded America from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean.

Download or read book Westward Expansion and Migration, Grades 6 - 12 written by Barden and published by Mark Twain Media. This book was released on 2011-04-18 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bring history to life for students in grades 6–12 using Westward Expansion and Migration. This 128-page book is perfect for independent study or use as a tutorial aid. It explores history, geography, and social studies with activities that involve critical thinking, writing, and technology. The book includes topics such as Lewis and Clark, the Santa Fe Trail, the Gold Rush, and San Francisco. It also includes vocabulary words, time lines, maps, and reading lists. The book supports NCSS standards and aligns with state, national, and Canadian provincial standards.