What factors contributed to the settlement of the Great Plains?
factors that contributed to the settlement of the Great Plains and Far West Transcontinental railroad, California Gold rush, impact of westward expansion on the American Indians forced to move factors that encouraged American economic growth in the decades after the Civil War
Where did most European settlers settle in the Great Plains?
European Settlement of the Great Plains. Some dipped south into Salt Lake City, Utah, settling in the region developed by Mormons. On arriving at their destinations, the emigrants pursued mining, ranching, and farming, settling the far West and the Great Plains.
What is the narrative of the Great Plains history?
Environmental historian William Cronon has interpreted the history of the Great Plains in terms of narrative. The grand narrative of America, Cronon argues, is a story of progress.
How did overgrazing affect the Great Plains?
The overgrazed Plains were depleted of the perennial grasses that had supported one steer on every two acres and were seeded with less nutritious annuals that supported one steer per 5 to 10 acres. As perennials declined, wind and water erosion increased and topsoils were lost. Donald Worster calls the results an ecological disaster.
What led to the settlement of the Great Plains?
In 1862, at the height of the US Civil War, Abraham Lincoln took advantage of the absence of the slave-owning southern states to sign into law the Homestead Act of 1862. This revolutionary act opened up huge amounts land in the American Great Plains to private settlement.
What was the settlement of Great Plains?
The Great Plains were sparsely populated until about 1600. Spanish colonists from Mexico had begun occupying the southern plains in the 16th century and had brought with them horses and cattle. The introduction of the horse subsequently gave rise to a flourishing Plains Indian culture.
What helped the Great Plains?
After the Civil War, a series of federal land acts coaxed pioneers westward by incentivizing farming in the Great Plains. The Homestead Act of 1862, which provided settlers with 160 acres of public land, was followed by the Kinkaid Act of 1904 and the Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909.
Which helped promote settlement of the Great Plains states?
In 1862 the government encouraged settlement on the Great Plains by passing the Homestead Act. For a small registration fee, an individual could file for a homestead—a tract of public land available for settlement.
What factors pushed people to move to the Great Plains to farm?
European immigrants flooded onto the Great Plains, seeking political or religious freedom, or simply to escape poverty in their own country. Younger sons from the eastern seaboard - where the population was growing and land was becoming more expensive - went because it was a chance to own their own land.
What encouraged settlers to move west to Great Plains?
The Homestead Act encouraged settlers to move to the Great Plains. Life was hard, but settlers discovered that they could grow wheat using new technologies. By 1890 the land had been settled and farmed, and there was no longer a true frontier in the United States.
How did dry farming help plains settlers?
By the end of the century dry farming was championed as the solution to the agricultural problems of the Great Plains. Dry farming's purpose was to conserve limited moisture during dry weather by reducing or even eliminating runoff and evaporation, thereby increasing soil absorption and retention of moisture.
What happened to the Great Plains?
The Great Plains were long inhabited by Native Americans, who hunted the teeming herds of buffalo (see bison) that roamed the grasslands and, due to wholesale slaughter by settlers and the U.S. army, were nearly extinct by the end of the 19th cent. The region was explored by the Spanish in the 17th cent.
How did the settlers of the Great Plains increase the vulnerability of the land?
People settled the region in greater numbers, increasing the amount of land being plowed and grazed. What caused dust storms to become even larger and more destructive in the 1930s? Severe droughts hit the Midwest, making the soil dry and more vulnerable to winds.
Who settled on the Great Plains quizlet?
Terms in this set (6) 1a) What groups settled in the Great Plains? African Americans and Scandinavians from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland.
How did the Homestead Act encourage settlement of the Great Plains?
The Homestead Act encouraged western migration by providing settlers with 160 acres of land in exchange for a nominal filing fee. Among its provisions was a five-year requirement of continuous residence before receiving the title to the land and the settlers had to be, or in the process of becoming, U.S. citizens.
Which technologies helped settlers establish farms on the Great Plains?
possible to settle and farm the Great Plains:Sod houses. The two pictures below show settlers on the Great Plains. ... Steel plows. ... Water-pumping windmills. ... Barbed Wire. ... Railroads to the West. ... Wheat farming. ... Dry farming techniques.
Why was there so little settlement on the Great Plains in the early 1800s?
Why was there so little settlement on the Great Plains in the early 1800s? Conditions were not suitable for the kind of farming done at that time. Which statement best describes the Indian Removal Act of 1830? The act helped relocate eastern American Indians to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River.
Who had settled the Great Plains in the late 1800s?
They were joined in the Dakotas by substantial cohorts of French and English Canadians and Russo-Germans (Russians descended from Germans who had migrated to Russia in the 1700s)....8.1 The Great Plains: The Frontier Era (1850-1900)Nebraska1860 (33 states)28,8411880 (37 states)452,40230th1900 (45 states)1,066,3005 more columns
What groups settled in the Great Plains quizlet?
what groups settled in the great plains? farming families, single women, exodusters, and immigrants.
What were the Great Plains called?
Great American DesertGreat Plains, also called Great American Desert, major physiographic province of North America.
What was the main settlement of the Great Plains?
European Settlement of the Great Plains. The main settlement of the Great Plains occurred after the 1840 migrations to Oregon and the 1849 Gold Rush to California. Environmental historian William Cronon has interpreted the history of the Great Plains in terms of narrative. The grand narrative of America, Cronon argues, is a story of progress.
What were the two factors that led to the development of the Great Plains?
Historian Walter Prescott Webb's The Great Plains (1931) builds on Turner's progressive narrative, describing the rancher's and farmer's fron tiers on the Plains in terms of two formative factors — environment and technology . Webb states: "New inventions and discoveries had to be made before the pioneer farmer could go into the Great Plains and establish himself."12 Technologies allowed settlers to subdue a forbidding environment that had three main characteristics not found in the eastern United States. First, as pioneers moved west of the 100th meridian, the environment of the Plains became increasingly arid, lacking the minimum twenty inches of rainfall per year that would support agriculture reliably. Second, the Plains were treeless, and therefore did not provide the timber for fuel and building materials readily available in the East. Third, the Trans-Mississippi Plains were level, rising only gradually westward, which meant that rivers were shallow and lacked the power to operate mills or float ships.
What was the fourth technology that subdued the Plains?
The fourth technology that subdued the Plains was the John Deere plow. Like the mill, the plow was one of the important pieces of technology that changed Western history. The earliest plows of southern Europe, pulled by oxen, successfully scratched the dry shallow soils of the Mediterranean region.
What are the two formsative accounts of the Great Plains?
Two formative accounts reveal the environmental history of the Great Plains as a progressive narrative: Frederick Jackson Turner's "Significance of the Frontier in American History" (1893); and Walter Prescott Webb's The Great Plains (1931) . The opposite, or declensionist narrative, according to Cronon, relates history as environmental decline.
What technology did Webb use to control the Plains?
Following the Colt six-shooter (1835), which had subdued the Plains Indians, the second piece of technology that, from Webb's perspective, transformed the Plains was barbed wire.
What is the grand narrative of the Great Plains?
The grand narrative of America, Cronon argues, is a story of progress. The frontier narrative depicts that formative story and, as such, is the master narrative of American culture. A hostile environment, initially conceptualized as ...
What was the Great Plains?
A hostile environment, initially conceptualized as a Great American desert, was gradually brought under control and transformed into a garden, making the Great Plains a Garden of the World. That transition in perception occurred as people increasingly settled the Plains and gained control over nature.
What brought a boom in construction and industry in the Deep South?
C. In the Deep South a sharp increase in immigration brought a boom in construction and industry
Which government could dissolve business monopolies?
C. The federal government could dissolve business monopolies