Settlement West
David Taylor The American west was, in a word, opportunity. The discovery of gold in the mountains of Colorado and Northern California made it possible for ordinary people to strike it rich. The availability of new, free land, gave families the opportunity to leave the cities of the west and start new lives as farmers and ranchers. In an 1867 article in the New York Tribune, Horace Greeley explained to the unemployed of New York: “If you strike off into the broad, free West, and make yourself a farm from Uncle Sam’s generous domain, you will crowd nobody, starve nobody, and neither you nor your children need evermore beg for something to do” (Divine, 2013, p. 390). The Gold Rush of 1849 was probably the biggest factor in so …show more content…
The government owned about a billion acres of land that needed to be transformed from seemingly desert-like conditions into the agricultural and forest regions we see today. The Act made it possible for families to own large plots of land to be cultivated for profit. This idea was not immediately realized however, as poor farmers didn’t have the capital to buy the equipment necessary to turn the land into self-sustaining farmland. The Timber Culture Act of 1873 was an attempt at modifying the Homestead Act for the semiarid west. This Act provided for an additional 160 acres of land to homesteaders that would plant trees on a quarter of the land within 4 years. This was somewhat successful as 10 million acres of land were distributed and created larger plots of workable land for settlers. Still, there were large regions of desert that were unsuitable for cultivation. The Desert Land Act of 1877 provided yet another way for settlers to realize new opportunities in the form of even larger land grants for the use of cattle grazing with the provision that they irrigated part of the land within 3 …show more content…
Cattle ranching became a huge business on the “open range” extending from Texas north into Canada. Ranchers recognized that the railroads were the best way to transport their valuable livestock throughout the country. Cattle drives would bring large herds of cattle to a few train depots located in Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and the Wyoming Territory for transport. It was a very profitable business where ranchers could buy cheaply at $4 a head in Texas and sell at a great profit of $30 to $40 a head at the northern
David Taylor The American west was, in a word, opportunity. The discovery of gold in the mountains of Colorado and Northern California made it possible for ordinary people to strike it rich. The availability of new, free land, gave families the opportunity to leave the cities of the west and start new lives as farmers and ranchers. In an 1867 article in the New York Tribune, Horace Greeley explained to the unemployed of New York: “If you strike off into the broad, free West, and make yourself a farm from Uncle Sam’s generous domain, you will crowd nobody, starve nobody, and neither you nor your children need evermore beg for something to do” (Divine, 2013, p. 390). The Gold Rush of 1849 was probably the biggest factor in so …show more content…
The government owned about a billion acres of land that needed to be transformed from seemingly desert-like conditions into the agricultural and forest regions we see today. The Act made it possible for families to own large plots of land to be cultivated for profit. This idea was not immediately realized however, as poor farmers didn’t have the capital to buy the equipment necessary to turn the land into self-sustaining farmland. The Timber Culture Act of 1873 was an attempt at modifying the Homestead Act for the semiarid west. This Act provided for an additional 160 acres of land to homesteaders that would plant trees on a quarter of the land within 4 years. This was somewhat successful as 10 million acres of land were distributed and created larger plots of workable land for settlers. Still, there were large regions of desert that were unsuitable for cultivation. The Desert Land Act of 1877 provided yet another way for settlers to realize new opportunities in the form of even larger land grants for the use of cattle grazing with the provision that they irrigated part of the land within 3 …show more content…
Cattle ranching became a huge business on the “open range” extending from Texas north into Canada. Ranchers recognized that the railroads were the best way to transport their valuable livestock throughout the country. Cattle drives would bring large herds of cattle to a few train depots located in Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and the Wyoming Territory for transport. It was a very profitable business where ranchers could buy cheaply at $4 a head in Texas and sell at a great profit of $30 to $40 a head at the northern