5 7 spreading across the continent

Vocabulary pioneer gold rush entrepreneur telegraph technology cattle drive transcontinental railroad homesteader Write to It!. You will also read about events that changed their lives a

SPREADING ACROSS THE CONTINENT

Scott Foresman Social Studies

Genre Comprehension Skill Text Features

Nonfi ction Sequence • Maps

• Sidebar

ISBN 0-328-14910-1

ì<(sk$m)=bejbaa< +^-Ä-U-Ä-U

Fascinating Facts

man charged people who came to his wedding five dollars

just to see his bride

Charles “Chuck” Goodnight, a Texas rancher who marked

the Goodnight-Loving Trail with cattleman Oliver Loving

hundred pounds, and it took five men to lift it and fit it

into place

by Tammy Zambo

SPREADING ACROSS THE CONTINENT

Scott Foresman Social Studies

Genre Comprehension Skill Text Features

Nonfi ction Sequence • Maps

• Sidebar

ISBN 0-328-14910-1

ì<(sk$m)=bejbaa< +^-Ä-U-Ä-U

Fascinating Facts

man charged people who came to his wedding five dollars

just to see his bride

Charles “Chuck” Goodnight, a Texas rancher who marked

the Goodnight-Loving Trail with cattleman Oliver Loving

hundred pounds, and it took five men to lift it and fit it

into place

by Tammy Zambo

Vocabulary

pioneer gold rush entrepreneur telegraph technology cattle drive transcontinental railroad homesteader

Write to It!

Suppose that you have been working as a rider for the Pony Express Write a journal entry describing the mail service, and tell what a typical day might be like

Write your journal entry on a separate sheet of paper

ISBN: 0-328-14910-1

Copyright © Pearson Education, Inc

All Rights Reserved Printed in the United States of America This publication is protected

by Copyright, and permission should be obtained from the publisher prior to any prohibited

reproduction, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission in any form by any means,

electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or likewise For information regarding

permission(s), write to: Permissions Department, Scott Foresman, 1900 East Lake Avenue,

Glenview, Illinois 60025.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 V0G1 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05

Photographs

Every effort has been made to secure permission and provide appropriate credit for photographic material The publisher deeply regrets any omission and pledges to correct errors called to its attention in subsequent editions.

Unless otherwise acknowledged, all photographs are the property of Scott Foresman, a division of Pearson Education.

Photo locators denoted as follows: Top (T), Center (C), Bottom (B), Left (L), Right (R) Background (Bkgd) Opener: ©Corbis

2 ©Archives Charmet/Bridgeman Art Library, (Inset) ©Image Farm Inc., (Bkgd) ©Getty Images

3 ©North Wind Picture Archives

4 ©Connie Ricca/Corbis

5 ©California Historical Society

6 ©Corbis

8 ©Utah State Historical Society, SCL, Utah

11 ©W.I Hutchinson/Corbis

12 ©Corbis

13 ©Andrew Joseph Russel/Corbis

14 ©J.N Templeman/Corbis

The 1800s brought a period of expansion to the United States

as the country began spreading westward The West promised

adventure and a chance to make a good living In this book you

will read about the pioneers who traveled to the West You will

also read about events that changed their lives and influenced

the growth of the country, such as the gold rush, cattle ranching,

and the transcontinental railroad

Editorial Offices: Glenview, Illinois • Parsippany, New Jersey • New York, New York Sales Offices: Needham, Massachusetts • Duluth, Georgia • Glenview, Illinois Coppell, Texas • Sacramento, California • Mesa, Arizona

SPREADING ACROSS THE CONTINENT

by Tammy Zambo

The Louisiana

Purchase

Before 1804 the United

States was made up of

seventeen states between

the East Coast and the

Mississippi River That same

year, President Thomas

Jefferson sent Meriwether

Lewis and William Clark to

explore the new United

States territory west of the

Mississippi known as the

Louisiana Purchase

Americans followed news of

Lewis and Clark’s expedition

with great interest Soon

many of them decided to

discover for themselves what

delights lay in that mysterious

western land The expansion of

the American West had begun

Even before Lewis and Clark returned, a few adventurous

people set out to make their living as beaver trappers in the West

These brave souls were almost all men They became known as

“mountain men.” Some of them, such as Jim Bridger and Jim

Beckwourth, became famous The mountain men moved from

stream to stream in search of beavers for the fur trade, exploring

and charting trails as they went along It was these trails that

other Americans soon followed as they too moved west

Jim Beckwourth was born enslaved, and was raised by a Virginia planter until he gained his freedom He became a mountain man.

3

Pioneers Move West

By 1840 the beaver population had declined and some of the mountain men returned to the East Others found different work, such as guiding pioneers over the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada on their way to California or Oregon Territory

In the 1840s Texas became the twenty-eighth state The United States also claimed territory from the British that spanned Washington, Oregon, and Idaho Victory in the Mexican War added lands including California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah Easterners wanted to see these regions More and more Americans headed west in search of exciting new lives

Pioneers such as these ones began traveling to Oregon Territory in the 1840s.

The Pioneers’ Journey

Families moving west left in the spring from Omaha, Nebraska,

or Independence, Missouri Each family had a covered wagon,

a team of oxen, and several months’ worth of supplies The

wagons moved single file in one long caravan along trusted trails

Many followed the Overland Trail, which later split into the

Oregon and California Trails Others took the Santa Fe Trail

into the Southwest

Most family members, including children, walked alongside

their wagon during the day so they could drive cattle and other

livestock They hunted buffalo, elk, and deer along parts of the trail, while their cows provided fresh milk

A churn attached to the wagon made butter as the wagon bumped along

The two-thousand-mile journey was long, difficult, and dangerous

Wagon trains traveled

at just two miles an hour Pioneers bound for Oregon Territory took about five months to arrive at their destination Bad weather and rough trail conditions

were constant threats Illness was another problem, and graves

dotted every trail Children who began the trip with two parents

might be orphans by the time their caravan reached Oregon

Deep ruts such as these were created by

the wheels of thousands of covered wagons

moving along the major pioneer trails They

are still visible in some parts of the West.

5

Gold Fever

In January 1848 a work crew was building a sawmill on the American River in California when a crew member spotted a nugget of gold about half the size of a pea on the ground The West would never be the same

Word spread quickly that gold had been discovered People from all over the region soon headed for the California goldfields When many of them found gold, people from back East and all over the world began to catch “gold fever.” A large number of people immigrated to California in 1849, which earned them the name “forty-niners.”

San Francisco and other growing California cities were soon home to the most diverse population of people in the world, with European Americans, African Americans (both enslaved and free), and Native Americans They came from the East Coast, as well as from China, Germany, Ireland, Russia, Italy, the West Indies, and Australia Less than ten percent of them were women

This is the sawmill on the American River where the first gold nugget was found.

Getting the Gold

Getting to California from the eastern states took time and

effort Most people traveled over land in covered wagons, although

two routes by sea were available One route went eighteen

thousand nautical miles south around the tip of South America

and north again The other route went only as far as Panama,

but then passengers had to cross an isthmus, or a narrow strip

of land, by mule and canoe to the Pacific side There was an

additional risk of catching tropical diseases along the way

For a few years there was plenty of gold to be found through

placer mining This method involved searching on or near the

surface of the soil with just a pick, shovel, or pan By 1852,

however, this surface gold was virtually gone Investors set up

mining companies in the goldfields They used heavy machinery

to extract more gold by drilling deep shafts into the ground or by

blasting into hillsides

California miners often worked in groups, but others worked alone.

7

Gold Rush Entrepreneurs

Most of the people who moved to California during the

gold rush were looking for gold, but some of them set up

businesses to serve the miners One of these entrepreneurs built

a store right next to the sawmill where the first gold was found Others opened laundries or restaurants Women also found opportunities by working as entertainers, cooks, or by providing other domestic services The operator of a boarding house could earn up to two hundred dollars per week

A few entrepreneurs became famous—and wealthy Levi Strauss made the world’s first blue jeans, tough pants that were suitable for mining Philip Armour grew wealthy with a meat market and later built a meatpacking empire in Chicago, Illinois John Studebaker made wheelbarrows and used his profits to expand the family’s Indiana business by making wagons and, later, automobiles Henry Wells and William Fargo established reliable banks and securely transported gold during the gold rush

Some forty-niners stayed in California and earned a paycheck working for the new mining companies Others headed home, searching for gold along the way Some were lucky Significant gold deposits were found in present-day Colorado, and the city

of Denver sprang up as a result Gold was also found in what are now Montana, Oregon, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada

The Pony Express

The thousands of people who moved to California during the

gold rush longed for news from the East and for letters from

family members Mail service, however, was irregular and could

take months The immigrants began to demand faster, more

reliable service

Three entrepreneurs—William Russell, Alexander Majors, and

William Waddell—operated a successful freight service hauling

supplies to settlers and military posts across the West The three

men had a daring new idea of setting up a two-thousand-mile

route for transporting the mail in ten days or less Experienced

horse riders would carry the mail in relay fashion

The service, the Central Overland California & Pike’s Peak

Express Company, began on April 3, 1860 It soon became known

as the Pony Express It featured fine, sturdy horses and eighty

riders, men and boys who weighed an average of between 100

and 120 pounds and knew the frontier well Each rider carried

9

a mailbag draped over his saddle Because speed mattered so much, the mail could weigh no more than

10 pounds A half-ounce letter initially cost five dollars

in gold to mail (about one hundred dollars today) Both letters and newspapers were printed on thin tissue paper

The mail was never allowed to stop on its route, regardless of weather or time of day or night Each rider covered between 75 and 100 miles between relay stations Two minutes was allowed every 10 to 15 miles for changing horses If somehow a horse was lost or killed along the way, its rider had to carry the mail on foot to the next relay station Sometimes a rider would arrive at a relay station only to find that no rider was there to relieve him When this happened, the rider, and sometimes the same horse, would press on to the next station—and often the one after that One rider rode through

a blizzard and subzero temperatures for more than thirty-six hours, covering 160 miles before a fresh rider could take over

The Arrival of the Telegraph

The Pony Express operated for only about eighteen months before the telegraph made it obsolete This technology, already used in the East, transmitted messages electrically along wires

Now it took mere minutes to do what the Pony Express did in ten days On October 24, 1861, the extension of telegraph lines to the West Coast was complete Two days later, California newspapers reported that “Our little friend the Pony is to run no more.”

The Pony Express route ran from St Joseph, Missouri,

to Sacramento, California.

The Long Drive

Even before Americans began heading to the far West,

thousands of people settled in Texas and established cattle

ranches Texas was perfect for raising cattle because the wide

open terrain provided plenty of room for grazing Ranchers raised

far more cattle than they could sell locally, so they needed

new markets

Easterners wanted to buy beef, but getting cattle to the

nearest eastern market was very difficult In the West, though,

cattle could be driven in herds across the plains The California

gold rush was a prime opportunity for Texas ranchers because

the large numbers of forty-niners demanded more beef than local

ranchers could supply During the 1850s more than 100,000

cattle were driven from Texas to San Francisco

Cowboys drove herds of cattle from their home ranches to

railroad towns along several trails.

Railroad

Cattle trail

Present-day

boundaries are shown

11

The peak of cattle driving, though, came after the Civil War as the eastern railroads began branching farther west Cattle were now driven north from Texas to towns such as Sedalia and Dodge City, Missouri, and Abilene, Kansas There the cattle were shipped

by rail to Chicago, Illinois, the center of the meatpacking industry

Cattle drives were usually led by teams of cowboys rather than

by the ranchers themselves A team was made up of a trail boss and eight to ten cowboys for a herd of between two and three thousand cattle A team also had a cook who drove the “chuck wagon” and a wrangler who took care of the cowboys’ horses

Most cowboys were European American, but Mexican and African American cowboys were also common

Keeping the cattle calm and headed in the right direction was the cowboys’ primary duty The cattle were nervous and could stampede at the slightest sound or unexpected movement They panicked easily while crossing rivers, too, and could begin to mill, or move in a tight circle until those in the center went under Cowboys broke up stampedes

and mills They tracked down strays and coaxed stragglers

They took turns keeping watch through the night, too, so they got little sleep After months

on the trail, a team reached the town of its destination

There the cowboys got a bath and a new set of clothes

The chuck wagon was designed to carry cooking utensils and supplies, such as flour and spices.

Ranches Move North

Between 1865 and 1890, about ten million cattle were driven north from Texas

Gradually, though, the open range was fenced off Ranchers spread north into the prairies

of Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana

Cattle drives shortened to a few days, rather than months, but

the winters up north were snowy and cold On the trail, cowboys

had to find grazing areas where the wind had blown away the

snow, and chop holes in the ice so the cattle could get water to

drink Sunlight on the snow was blinding and also caused the

cowboys to get sunburned Frost cracked their lips and skin The

glory days of the cowboy were over

The Transcontinental Railroad

Before the Civil War, settlers west of the Missouri River began

demanding that the railroad be extended to the West Coast

Congress authorized a transcontinental railroad in 1862, and

two companies began to build it in 1863, from opposite ends

of the country The Union Pacific, employing ten thousand men,

worked its way west from Omaha, Nebraska The Central Pacific,

employing eleven thousand men, worked its way east from

Sacramento, California

Driving cattle was a tiring and dirty business “There was never enough sleep,” one cowboy later remembered.

13

The height of the Civil War interrupted construction, but it resumed once the war was over Each crew faced immense challenges Union Pacific workers were attacked by Native Americans who controlled the land Central Pacific workers had to blast fifteen tunnels through the Sierra Nevada, which was a very dangerous job

The crew members were persistent Union Pacific workers were mostly immigrants from Ireland, but some were former Confederate soldiers, Mexicans, Germans, English, and former enslaved people Thousands of Central Pacific workers were Chinese immigrants who had tried looking for gold in California Each crew raced to see which could lay track over the most ground

Planners did not know where the two lines would join The competing crews that prepared the ground for the track even passed each other

At last, the two lines were connected on May 10, 1869, at Promontory Point, Utah Territory.

Homesteaders on the Great Plains

A new period of settlement by pioneers began in 1862 when

Congress passed the Homestead Act This act provided that

any person who claimed a plot of public land, a homestead, on

the Great Plains and farmed it for five years would be given 160

acres The transcontinental railroad in 1869 lured settlers farther

west, and farms sprang up all across the Midwest

Nearly two million people moved to the plains in the 1870s

and tirelessly worked to improve their farms The homesteaders

built their houses out of sod They plowed their fields and dug

wells or walked to nearby streams for water They hoped for

favorable weather to grow strong crops, and they started over

when grasshoppers or hail or drought destroyed those crops They

tended to each other in sickness, and lent a hand to settlers in

need Some women became self-taught midwives, helping other

women during pregnancy and childbirth Their lives were hard, but

they did everything they could to survive and even thrive

15

Settlers and the Environment

The American pioneer expansion into the West left scars on the environment Thirty million or so buffalo once roamed the plains In the 1860s, however, the buffalo had to compete with the pioneers’ livestock for grassland In addition, more and more people hunted buffalo simply for sport, and making leather from their hides became a big business In one two-year period in Kansas alone, between one-and-a-half and three million buffalo were killed

The land, too, suffered After California’s surface gold disappeared, hydraulic mining was used to tear riverbeds apart

to search for more gold By the 1860s people could see that hydraulic mining was destroying the rivers, but it took decades

to end the practice A European, James Bryce, wrote about destruction such as this: “Why, in your hurry to subdue [control]

and utilize nature, squander [waste] her splendid gifts?”

Luckily, some Americans were just as concerned In 1872 Congress created the world’s first national park, Yellowstone National Park, to preserve the beauty of the area In 1892 John Muir and other environmentalists formed the Sierra Club to preserve the Yosemite Valley and the surrounding Sierra Nevada Other national parks followed

A family of homesteaders stands in front of their sod house.

Glossary

cattle drive a way that cowboys move large herds of cattle

north from ranches in Texas to towns along the railroad in

the late 1800s

entrepreneur a person who starts a new business, hoping to

make a profit

gold rush the sudden movement of many people to an area

where gold has been found

homesteader a settler who claimed land under the

Homestead Act

pioneer an early settler of a region

technology the use of new ideas to make tools that improve

people’s lives

telegraph a device that sends messages through wires using

electricity

transcontinental railroad a railroad that crosses a continent

Vocabulary

pioneer gold rush entrepreneur telegraph technology cattle drive transcontinental railroad homesteader

Write to It!

Suppose that you have been working as a rider for the Pony Express Write a journal entry describing the mail service, and tell what a typical day might be like

Write your journal entry on a separate sheet of paper

ISBN: 0-328-14910-1

Copyright © Pearson Education, Inc

All Rights Reserved Printed in the United States of America This publication is protected

by Copyright, and permission should be obtained from the publisher prior to any prohibited

reproduction, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission in any form by any means,

electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or likewise For information regarding

permission(s), write to: Permissions Department, Scott Foresman, 1900 East Lake Avenue,

Glenview, Illinois 60025.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 V0G1 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05

Photographs

Every effort has been made to secure permission and provide appropriate credit for photographic material The publisher deeply regrets any omission and pledges to correct errors called to its attention in subsequent editions.

Unless otherwise acknowledged, all photographs are the property of Scott Foresman, a division of Pearson Education.

Photo locators denoted as follows: Top (T), Center (C), Bottom (B), Left (L), Right (R) Background (Bkgd) Opener: ©Corbis

2 ©Archives Charmet/Bridgeman Art Library, (Inset) ©Image Farm Inc., (Bkgd) ©Getty Images

3 ©North Wind Picture Archives

4 ©Connie Ricca/Corbis

5 ©California Historical Society

6 ©Corbis

8 ©Utah State Historical Society, SCL, Utah

11 ©W.I Hutchinson/Corbis

12 ©Corbis

13 ©Andrew Joseph Russel/Corbis

14 ©J.N Templeman/Corbis

The 1800s brought a period of expansion to the United States

as the country began spreading westward The West promised

adventure and a chance to make a good living In this book you

will read about the pioneers who traveled to the West You will

also read about events that changed their lives and influenced

the growth of the country, such as the gold rush, cattle ranching,

and the transcontinental railroad