- Warm UP: Images - Notes on: Living on the Plains - First Person Accounts - Quotes - Review

1. - Warm UP: Images- Notes on: Living on the Plains- First Person Accounts- Quotes- Review

6. Homestead Act -passed in 1862 160 Acres of land FREE to any citizen or intended citizen who was head of a household -to encourage settlement of the Plains area 1862 to 1900 – 600,000 families will take advantage of the Act – only 10% will be settled by those intended -gave 160 acres of land to settlers if they improved the land and lived on it. “Exodusters” = African Americans who moved to Kansas post-Reconstruction

7. Homestead Act -land speculators Claim land for other purposes than home. Miners and Woodcutters – for resources Cattlemen – for grazing -Oklahoma giveaway, 1889 One Day – 2 mil. Acres – some will take possession before the govt. officially considers it open -people continued to come for the cheap lands and opportunity By 1890 the government will declare the frontier no longer existing – it’s been claimed or made into a National Park (Yellowstone)

8. Homestead Act -passed in 1862 160 Acres of land FREE to any citizen or intended citizen who was head of a household -to encourage settlement of the Plains area 1862 to 1900 – 600,000 families will take advantage of the Act – only 10% will be settled by those intended -gave 160 acres of land to settlers if they improved the land and lived on it. “Exodusters” = African Americans who moved to Kansas post-Reconstruction land speculators Claim land for other purposes than home. Miners and Woodcutters – for resources Cattlemen – for grazing -Oklahoma giveaway, 1889 One Day – 2 mil. Acres – some will take possession before the govt. officially considers it open -people continued to come for the cheap lands and opportunity By 1890 the government will declare the frontier no longer existing – it’s been claimed or made into a National Park (Yellowstone)

9. New Technology -deeper wells Drier Land needs to go deeper for water -steel plows John Deere – Could cut through heavy soil -better farm equipment reaper, harvesters – McCormick Springtooth Harrow – prepared soil; Grain Drill – plants seeds; Barbed Wire to fence in land; New and improved reaper-Morrill Land Grants -railroad expansion transcontinental railroad, 1869

10. New Technology -Morrill Land Grants Gave land to states to help finance agricultural colleges Hatch Act – established experiment stations to inform farmers of developments -railroad expansion transcontinental railroad, 1869 Huge land grants for railroads – 170 mil. Acres (1/2 a Billion in price) – to lay tracks in the West. Sometimes sold excess land for profit.

11. Life on the Farm -sod houses Made out of the land itself – trees are scarce – dirt is plentiful. A) Dig into a ravine or hill and add a stovepipe; B) Make blocks out of dirt and stack. Warm in the Winter; Cool in the Summer -weather extremes Plains fluctuate between very cold and very hot and dry; Tornadoes -drought Could ruin a season -isolation Families left to themselves

12. Life on the Farm -sod houses Made out of the land itself – trees are scarce – dirt is plentiful. A) Dig into a ravine or hill and add a stovepipe; B) Make blocks out of dirt and stack. Warm in the Winter; Cool in the Summer -weather extremes Plains fluctuate between very cold and very hot and dry; Tornadoes -drought Could ruin a season -isolation Families left to themselves

13. Life on the Farm -sod houses Made out of the land itself – trees are scarce – dirt is plentiful. A) Dig into a ravine or hill and add a stovepipe; B) Make blocks out of dirt and stack. Warm in the Winter; Cool in the Summer -weather extremes Plains fluctuate between very cold and very hot and dry; Tornadoes -drought Could ruin a season -isolation Families left to themselves

14. Decline of Farming -rise of industry Industries will begin to become the focus of American culture -urbanization Population growth is moving to the cities not out west -end of the frontier -Frederick Jackson Turner “Frontier Thesis” Frontier is what made us unique and now it has ended -great debts Machinery is expensive – go in debt to make Homestead work, only to go bankrupt

15. Decline of Farming Railroad Charges Western farmers are charged a higher price than Eastern farmers. They’re also charged more for short hauls than long hauls.

16. Life on the Plains 29 1 I don't know why I took the chance to go west. It was 1862 and reminders of the war were all around me. Couple that with the general uselessness of my farmland and I guess that validates my decision. Then there was the Homestead Act. Free land was available and all I had to do was improve it. That's a vague directive if I ever heard one. I packed my family up and we left in the early spring of 1863. Later, we arrived to a barren plain that was now our land. It was so unlike our old home and so hostile, such unrelieved desolation. We were alone-no people, no buildings, nothing except for tall grasses and the occasional buffalo. Dark clouds arose that night as we bedded down after our journey. That first night was so bitterly cold. We woke up the next day to find snow on the ground and more falling. That spring we began the work of building of a home from the sod, and my son and I started to plow the land and prepare for the coming winter. The snow passed, the house rose up from the ground, the crops were plowed, the summer passed, and the harvest collected. That first winter brought death to the family-my wife and both of the children fell to illness and one of the children did not recover. We started the spring with one less family member. Never in my life had I felt such remorse and pain. I can only hope for better days in the future. An early settler

17. 2 I'm am getting sick and tired of living out here. We moved out to this treacherous place to start a new life, supposedly a better one. Ha, I'll believe that when I see it. How can there possibly be anything good to come out of this place? There is nothing to see for miles and miles but farm land. No people, no one to talk to, I'm gonna go crazy. And just look at what we are living in. A sod house is what my dear sweet husband calls it but I call it what it is... Dirt, a dirt house!!! If I would have know this is what I was leaving my wonderful townhouse with all my luxuries that I need, I would have told him I wasn't leaving, but he promised it would be better. Well, all I have to say is that something better start looking better, cause I don't like it here. Woman living on the Frontier

18. Quotes: • “I think…it took more to live twenty-four hours at a time, month in and out, on the lonely and lovely prairie, without giving up to loneliness.” Esther Clark Hill, Kansas • “Now…the frontier has gone and with its going has closed the first period of American history.” Frederick Jackson Turner • “No other system of taxation has borne as heavily on the people as those extortions and inequalities of railroad charges” Henry Demarest Lloyd, 1881 Atlantic Monthly

19. Quiz

20. The Morrill Land Grant acts created what type of colleges?

21. Historian Frederick Jackson Turner stressed the importance of this concept to the success of Americans?

22. These were the types of houses that many people first built when they moved to the mid-west?

23. This law created 160 acres plots of land to be sold for a small fee to encourage settlement in the west. Name the law.