The U.S. Expands

1. The U.S. Expands Westward Bound!

2. After the war…

3. Land for Sale! • In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson decides to purchase the Louisiana territory from France.

4. Guess how much he paid? • 530 million acres • 15 million dollars • 4 cents an acre!!

5. What did we just buy?

6. Exploring the new land • Thomas Jefferson decides to send an expedition to the Pacific Coast to explore the new land. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

7. Walking West • Left 8-31-03 • Reached the Pacific 12-3-05 • Studied the plants, animals, and Indian tribes they discovered.

8. Sacagawea • Lewis and Clark met up with an Indian tribe in what is now North Dakota. • An Indian woman named Sacagawea joined them as a translator. • She traveled with them all the way to the Pacific and back.

9. Land of the West • What kinds of landforms, animals, and plants do you think Lewis and Clark encountered?

10. Manifest Destiny • The United States wants to stretch its country across the continent and expand to the Pacific Ocean. • This idea was called Manifest Destiny.

11. Whose land? • Mexico owned a lot of land in North America. • In 1836, Texas became independent from Mexico. • In 1845, the United States annexed Texas.

12. The U.S. wanted to buy territory from Mexico, but they refused. • Manifest Destiny! • A war between the U.S. and Mexico began in 1846.

13. Mexican-American War • The U.S. won the war, and the two countries came to an agreement called the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. • Mexico gave up its land north of the Rio Grande River to the United States. • In 1853, the U.S. bough an additional 30,000 square miles from Mexico for $10 million.

14. The United States in 1848

15. What’s that in the water? • In 1848, a man named James Marshall found some gold flakes in the water at Sutter’s Mill in California. • Word gets out…

16. RUSH! RUSH! RUSH! • People began rushing towards California in wagon trains and ships to search for gold. • They were called “forty-niners.” • Many people moved West, and the area grew quickly. • This was called the Gold Rush.

17. The Oregon Trail • Many people began moving to the West. • Most took a trail towards Oregon, called the Oregon Trail. • It was a long, rough trail.

18. Settling Down • As people began settling on the Western frontier, they helped to develop the land. • How?

19. 1867 • Russia had 600,000 square miles of land they wanted to sell to the U.S. • The area was cold and very far away from the rest of the United States. • Secretary of State William Seward purchased the land for $7,200,000 (about 2 cents an acre). • It was called “Seward’s Folly” because everyone thought it was a bad idea. • This area became the state of Alaska.

20. 1897 • The island country of Hawaii was annexed by the United States.

21. Manifest Destiny!!!