American History B Unit 1: Changing And Growing

Front 1

barbed wire

Back 1

twisted wire with sharp barbs used to build fences to control cattle and mark property lines

Front 2

Great American Desert

Back 2

a term the early pioneers and Forty-Niners used to describe the Plains States

Front 3

Homestead Act

Back 3

a law passed in 1862 that offered settlers 160 acres of land for $10

Front 4

prairie

Back 4

a large area of grasslands

Front 5

three of the primary products produced on the Great Plains

Back 5

wheat, cattle, and sheep

Front 6

obstacles settlers encountered as they moved west

Back 6

sod difficult to plow, the temperatures extreme, conflicts with Indians, and the violent storms.

Front 7

factors that made the cattle business profitable

Back 7

ranchers could transport cattle to market relatively cheaply & growing cities demanded more beef

Front 8

life of a cowboy

Back 8

Cowboy life was hard. The cowboys were isolated and poorly paid. They faced bad

weather, thirst, stampedes, and attacks by Native Americans and rustlers.

Front 9

diversity of the cowboy population

Back 9

men and women of all ethnic backgrounds

Front 10

Who was harmed by the farming revolution of the late 1800s?

Back 10

The farming revolution hurt the Native Americans and the indigenous wildlife of the

prairie. It also hurt the cowboys and cattle drivers as well as the small-scale farmer.

Front 11

Why was it hard for Native Americans and new Americans to share the land?

Back 11

Native Americans relied on hunting buffalo herds that roamed freely on the plains.

Farmers and ranchers needed to fence in the land to keep cattle in and keep buffalo out

of their crops. The ways in which the two groups used the land were incompatible.

Front 12

Chief Joseph

Back 12

Fleeing from the U.S. Army, this courageous Nez Perce leader led his people in a desperate journey toward Canada and freedom.

Front 13

Legal ways that railroad tycoons financed the construction or railroads

Back 13

Receiving government aid, selling stocks in their companies, and paying low wages to workers

Front 14

Effects of the railroad over a long period of time

Back 14

Uniting the nation, providing faster transportation across the country, creation of time zones, and increased westward expansion of settlement.

Front 15

range

Back 15

open land for grazing cattle

Front 16

reason for the end of long cattle drives

Back 16

New railroad lines across the Great Plains made it cheaper to ship cattle by rail.

Front 17

new technology of the 1800s that had the greatest impact on cattle ranchers on the Great Plains

Back 17

refrigerated rail cars

Front 18

Chisholm Trail

Back 18

a trail used in the post American Civil War era to drive cattle overland from ranches in Texas to Kansas railheads.

Front 19

a major challenge facing the builders of the transcontinental railroad

Back 19

crossing the Sierra Nevada mountains

Front 20

windmills

Back 20

provided water for crops and livestock when limited water was available

Front 21

McCormick reaper

Back 21

made harvesting large fields of crops much faster and easier.

Front 22

steel plow

Back 22

made tough prairie sod easier to cultivate