Bigger, Better, Faster: The Changing Nation. Reporters on the Range: News from the Old West You and your partner are reporters for our classroom newspaper.

Bigger, Better, Faster: The Changing Nation

Reporters on the Range: News from the Old West

• You and your partner are reporters for our classroom newspaper.

• Your goal is to discover and create a news article that addresses the big idea related to this unit. You will draw a question that you’ll investigate through the course of this unit.

• You will need to turn in an electronic copy of your news article that will be published in our class newspaper.

Your checklist

• You will have a copy of a checklist to follow through, which includes:– Vocabulary cards– T-Chart – Geographical Features Hot-dog book– Cattle Drive Note-taking Guide– Brain Pop Quiz on Westward Expansion– Your newspaper article

Big Ideas

• Moving to new places changes the people, land, and culture of the new place as well as the place they left.

• Technology has many different types of consequences, depending on how people use that technology.

• Conflict causes change.

Georgia Performance Standards

• SS5H3: The student will describe how life changed in America at the turn of the century.

• Describe the role of the cattle trails in the late 19th century; include the Black Cowboys of Texas, the Great Western Cattle Trail, and the Chisholm Trail.

• Describe the impact of westward expansion on Native Americans; include the Battle of the Little Bighorn and the relocation of Native Americans to reservations.

Moving West Activity

• Use index cards and make vocabulary cards for the following words. You will find the definitions in the next few slides:

• Migration • Immigrate• Emigrate• Price incentive• Exodusters• Droughts• Homestead Act

What was “Westward Expansion?”

The migration of people from the Eastern coast of the United States to the Pacific coast.It was one of the biggest human migrations of all time. Migration: A movement from one place to another.

Emigrate : To leave one country to settle in another.

Immigrate: To come into a new country to settle.

Vocabulary:

Why did people migrate ?

• In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson bought land through the Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the size of the U.S.

• During the 1840’s thousands of families made the journey west by wagon or foot to California or Oregon. – Many sold everything they had to make the

trip to Independence, Missouri, where the Oregon Trail began. (It was a 2,000 mile journey).These Pioneers were pulled to

the West by the stories they heard about the fertile and abundant farm land that existed.

Why did people migrate? (cont.)

• The Homestead Act of 18621.Congress offered 160 acres of land, in the Great Plains Region, to adults who were U.S. citizens or wanted to become one.2. For a small amount of money they had to farm the land for 5 years and then it was theirs.

http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/homestead-act/

http://www.footnote.com/page/83001585_the_homestead_act_1862/?xid=318

When price affects the decisions people make it is called a price incentive.

Vocabulary

Who Took Advantage of the Homestead Act?

• People from the eastern part of the U.S., where farmland was expensive.

• Settlers from Europe who were looking for larger farms.

• African American Settlers, called Exodusters ,settled in Kansas and other parts of the Great Plains. Between 1877 and 1879.

• (Benjamin “Pap” Singleton was the most famous Exoduster.)

http://www.autrynationalcenter.org/explore/exhibits/sod/daily.htmlhttp://edsitement.neh.gov/view_lesson_plan.asp?id=296#SELECTED

Hardships on The Great Plains

• Look at the picture to the left. What hardships do

you think settlers faced in the Great Plains?

Winters were long and bitterly cold.

Spring brought violent thunderstorms, floods and tornados.

Summers were hot and dry and droughts were common. This made prairie fires common.

Insects would eat their crops, clothing, and wood handles of farm tools.

Adapting to the Great Plains

• Settlers built houses out of sod they cut from the prairie in the shape of bricks. They got the nickname, sodbusters.

• The farmers had to use wheat seeds used on Eastern European farms.

• The farmers dug deep wells to get water. Those who could afford it used windmills to pump their water.

• New and improved farm machinery such as plows, reapers, and threshers made work faster and easier.http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0500/frameset_reset.html?http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0500/stories/0502_0100.html

Map Activity

• Using your outline map of the U.S. in your social studies notebook, identify the following physical features:

• The Grand Canyon

• Salton Sea

• The Great Salt Lake

• Mojave Desert

The Transcontinental Railroad

• The Pacific Railway Act (1862) Congress passed this act which set aside land from the

Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean for the first transcontinental railroad.

http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/five/railact.htm

The Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroad companies began construction in 1863.

The Central Pacific started in the west and the Union Pacific started in the central U.S., in the state of Nebraska.

The two railroads met on May 10, 1869, at Promontory Summit, Utah.

The Railroads Change the United States

• Take a few minutes to discuss with a partner how you think this new transcontinental railroad changed the nation.

1. Settlers in the West could earn money selling their products to the eastern cities (i.e. cattle, wheat…)

2. Western farmers could earn more money selling to people in the East.

3. Businesses and factories in the East used the railroads to ship clothing, tools, and other goods to western towns and mining camps.

4. Traveling to the West was easier and somewhat safer now.

T-Chart Activity

• How did the railroads and the movement of people to the west, change the people, land, and the culture of the Great Plains?

• Make and complete a 3-column T-chart to show your understanding of the question above.

Physical Features of the West

• As the country became “smaller”, people traveled west and came upon numerous physical

features of the United States which were new and exciting.

Let’s embark on a scavenger hunt to try and locate some of these physical features.!

1. The Grand Canyon

2. The Salton Sea

3. The Great Salt Lake

4. The Mojave Desert

Hot Dog Book Activityhttp://www.makingbooks.com/hotdog.shtml

Using the links on the previous slide, research and make a hot dog book to describe the physical features of the Western Frontier.

Cattle Drive Activity

• Use the note taking guide worksheet to answer questions on the following information on Cattle Drives

• Cattle Drive Notetaking Guide

The Cattle Drives

• In the 1860’s cattle was so abundant in Texas that one cow would sell for only $4.00.

• This same cattle could be sold in the Northern and Eastern United States for about $40.00 a piece.

This is called: Supply and Demand

So what would you have done if you were a Texas cattle rancher?

The only problem was…

…the railroads did not cross into Texas. The closest railheads (a town where railroad tracks begin or end) were hundreds of miles away.

The Cattle Drives

• The solution was…

http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/program/episodes/five/cowboys.htm

http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0500/frameset_reset.html?http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0500/stories/0502_0100.html

…to “drive” the cattle to places like Abilene, Kansas so they could be put on trains and shipped to stockyards in

the northern and eastern part of the United States.

The most popular trail was the Chisholm Trail,

which started in San Antonio, Texas and ended in Kansas.

http://www.bcr.org/cdp/exhibits/westerntrails/cattle/index.html

Another popular trail was the Great Western Trail, which start in Bandera,

Texas and ended in Ogallala, Nebraska.

Click on the links below to read more about the cattle drives.

Life on the Drives

• What was life like for the cowhands who worked on these cattle drives?

http://www.cartermuseum.org/collections/smith/

The End of The Cattle Drives

• The cattle drives only lasted for about 20 years.

What do you think were

some causes for the end of

this important era for the West?

1. The Homesteaders of the Great Plains region were getting upset that the

cattle were trampling their new land and their crops.

a) to keep the cattle drives off of their land they put up fences with barbed wire

2. The railroads began to grow. Railroads were built in Texas in the 1870’s,

ending the need for cattle drives to northern railheads.

3. Many cattle died during the abnormally cold winter of 1886-1887.

Black Cowboys

• Many African –Americans had just found freedom from slavery due to the 13th Amendment. For African Americans, the Old West represented a new home, a new

beginning, and a new opportunity to enjoy freedom, which they so desperately wanted.

http://www.blackcowboys.com/blackcowboys.htm

Nat Love

Bill Picket

Native Americans

• Beginning in the 1840’s, the U.S. government tried to convince Plains Indians to sell land and move to reservations.– Reservations-land that the government set

aside for American Indians– Indians fought the soldiers who tried to force

them. They sometimes attacked settlers and miners to make them leave their land.

Battle of Little Big Horn

• In the early 1870’s, gold was found in the hills of North Dakota.

• U. S. General George Custer tried to force the Lakota and Cheyenne Indians to leave the land.

• Led by Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull won in a battle near the Little Big Horn River.

Movement to Reservations

• Through the late 1800’s, many tribes fought and lost against the U.S. Government

• Tribes that depended on hunting the buffalo could not continue their lifestyle.

• White settlers and hunters killed so many buffalo that the species came close to extinction.

BrainPop Activity

• Click on the link to view the BrainPop “Westward Expansion” You will have to log in: Log in: fcss, password: password

• BrainPop-Westward Expansion

• Watch the video and then take the Graded Quiz and print the results

• Turn these in with your other activities.

Websites• http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/

Resources

• http://www.sonofthesouth.net/texas/westward-expansion-map.htm

• http://www.ncgold.com/goldrushtown/photoalbum/early_photography_people/01people.jpg

• http://images.google.com• http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/

• http://cprr.org/Museum/Ephemera/CP-UP_Timetable_1881/index.html