USA Geographical Features Using the map of

USA Geographical Features • Using the map of the United States label and/or color the following items. – Rocky Mountains – Blue – Appalachian Mountains – Red – Great Plains – Green – Continental Divide – black line – Atlantic and Pacific Ocean – Gulf of Mexico – Each of the Great Lakes

Essential Questions 1. What national issues emerged in the process of closing the western frontier? 2. Why does the West hold such an important place in the American imagination? 3. In what ways is the West romanticized in American culture?

Key Tensions Native Americans Cattlemen Ranchers Buffalo Hunters Railroads U. S. Government Sheep Herders Farmers

Key Tensions Ethnic Minorities Nativists Environmentalists Lawlessness of the Frontier Big Business Interests [mining, timber] Local Govt. Officials Farmers Buffalo Hunters “Civilizing” Forces [The “Romance” of the West]

Land Acts • Homestead Act – permitted “any citizen or intended citizen to select any surveyed land up to 160 acres and to gain title to it after five years’ residence” – Started the land boom. • Pacific Railway Act – gave lands to railroad companies to develop a railroad line linking the East and West Coast (1869) • Morrill Act – granted a total of more than 17 million acres of federal land to the states who then sold it to fund the formation of agricultural and Why was the government practically engineering colleges. giving way land?

The Battle of Little Big Horn 1876 Gen. George Armstrong Custer Chief Sitting Bull

Chief Joseph I will fight no more forever! Nez Percé tribal retreat (1877)

Geronimo, Apache Chief: Hopeless Cause

Helen Hunt Jackson A Century of Dishonor (1881)

Dawes Severalty Act (1887): Assimilation Policy Carlisle Indian School, PA

Indian Reservations Today

Railroad Construction

Promontory Point, UT (May 10, 1869)

Frontier Settlements: 1870 -1890

Homesteads From Public Lands

What is the Message of this Picture?

The Realty--A Pioneer’s Sod House, SD

Prospecting

Mining Centers: 1900

Anaconda Copper Mining Co. (MT)

Mining (“Boom”) Towns-Now Ghost Towns Calico, CA

The Cattle Trails

New Agricultural Technology Steel Plow [“Sod Buster”] “Prairie Fan” Water Pump

Barbed Wire Joseph Glidden

Frederick Jackson Turner The Significance of the Frontier in American Society (1893)

Black “Exoduster” Homesteaders

The Buffalo Soldiers on the Great Plains

The “Chinese Question” § Exclusion Act (1882) - Oriental Exclusion Act - Chinese Exclusion Act

Yellowstone National Park First national park established in 1872.

National Parks