Ch 8: Settling the West: 1865-1900

Ch 8: Settling the West: 1865-1900

Section 1: Miners and Ranchers

Objectives

• Trace the growth of the mining industry.• Describe the ways that new technology

changed open-range ranching.• Explain why people moved West in search of

economic opportunity.

Why did people move West?

• Start new lives in the West after the end of the Civil War

• Stories of gold, silver, and copper• Cheap land

Mining techniques

• 1. Placer Mining– Using pans, shovels, and picks to get the gold on

top of the earth

• 2. Quartz Mining– Digging deep into the earth to get the gold

Henry Comstock• Lived in Six-Mile Canyon, Nevada in 1859• Found silver on his property• Turned the town into a boomtown• The town turned into a ghost town after only a few years when the mines dried up

Boomtown Violence

• Boomtowns were dangerous places to live• People were robbed and killed over their finds• No police present• Vigilance committees-community members

preserved the peace

Results of Mining Boomtowns

• 1,000 people came out per week• Mined $1 billion in metals (billions today)• Caused Denver to become the 2nd largest city

in the West (supplies)• Rise in railroads West• North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana

became states

Rise of Cattle Ranching

• New breed of cattle (Texas Longhorn) could survive in the Great Plains– Did not need a lot of water/land

• Cattle roamed freely at first

Open Range

• Used by cowboys to raise cattle for free• Covered the Great Plains (owned by the gov’t)• Cattle were not fenced in

Post-Civil War Ranching• Soldiers ate beef during the war• Caused beef prices to rise• Railroads made it easy to move cattle to the

East to slaughter• Cattle were sold for 10x their original price

Long Drives

• Cattle were gathered up all over the Great Plains and moved to Kansas/Missouri to get onto trains

• 2,000-5,000 cattle moved at a time• Cattle ranchers included former soldiers, former slaves, and Hispanic cowboys• Stories were told in “Dime Novels”

Problems with Ranching

• Free cattle were collected and sold to private ranchers in Western territories• Started using barbed wire to fence off large areas

of land• Cold winters killed off large amounts of cattle• Oversupply in the markets dropped cattle prices– Ended Open Range and Cattle Drives