click below
click below
Normal Size Small Size show me how
Westward expansion
Term | Definition |
---|---|
California Gold Rush | period where thousands of people went west to search for gold |
Cattle Drive | when cowboys guided huge herds pf cattle north to new railroad lines extending across The Great Plains |
Pony Express | business that delivered mail from Missouri to California in just ten days |
Telegraph | invention that sent messages along wires using electricity |
Samuel B. Morse | developed a way to send telegraph messages |
Transcontinental Railroad | a railroad across the continet linking the Eastern United States to the western United Stats |
Union Pacific | began building train track west from Omaha, most workers were Irish immigrants |
Central Pacific | began building train track east from Sacramento, California. Most workers were Chinese immigrants |
Promontory point | place in Utah where the Union Pacific met the Central Pacific and connected the transcontinental railroad |
Chinese immigrants | made up almost 80% of the central pacific workers |
red cloud | told union Pacific workers they were scaring away the buffalo |
Gen. William Tecumsah Sherman | warned the Native Americans that nothing would stop the building of the railroads |
Homestead act of 1862 | law that offered free land to American citizens and immigrants who were willing to start farms on the Great Plains |
Homesteaders | settlers who claimed land through the Homestead act |
sod house (soddy) | houses made from sod (soil) on the Great Plains |
sodbusters | the name for farmers on the Great Plains |
pioneers | new settlers |