Term | Definition |
California gold rush | period where thousands of people went west to search for gold |
Cattle drive | when cowboys guided huge herds of 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 |
Telagraph | invention that sent messages along wires using electricity |
Samuel B. Morse | developed a way to send telegraph messages |
transcontinental railroad | a railroad across the continent liking the eastern United States to the western United States |
Union pacific | began building train track west from Omaha, most Irish immigrants |
central pacific | began building train track from Sacramento, California. most workers were Chinese immigrants. |
promontory point | place in Utah where the union pacific connected with the transcontinental railroad |
Chinese immagrants | made up almost 80% of central pacific workers. |
red cloud | told union pacific they were scaring away the buffalo |
Gen. William Tecumsah Sherman | warned Native American 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 homstead act |
sod house [soddy] | houses made from sod [soil] in the great plains |
sodbusters | names for farmers in the great plains |
pioneers | new settlers |
Exodusters | Thousends of African American pioneers who moved to the great plains and started communities. |
Nicodemus,Kansas | A successful community started by exodusters |