Mining & Boomtowns
A town experiencing sudden, explosive economic and population growth due to a gold rush.
What is a boomtown?
A network of local farmer groups
National Grange
The skilled Mexican herders who taught American cowboys their roping, riding, and herding traditions.
Who are vaqueros?
To celebrate the completion of the railroad, this special, expensive item was driven into the final railroad tie.
Golden Spike
This ritual religious dance swept through Plains tribes
What is the Ghost Dance?
The abandoned, empty settlements left behind after a mining town's gold or silver dried up.
A Ghost town
Which organization formed the People's Party or Populist Party?
Farmers Alliance
What is it called when thousands of cattle run in panic?
A Stampede
To keep trains running safely on a single master schedule, the railroad companies created these 4 geographical divisions in 1883.
What are time zones
This horrific 1864 tragedy occurred when Colorado volunteer militia forces launched a surprise dawn attack on a peaceful village of Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians
Sand Creek Massacre
Discovered in Nevada in 1859, it was one of the largest silver ore deposits ever found in American history.
What is the Comstock Lode?
What were Texas ranches called that were not fenced in or divided into lots?
Open Range Ranches
This was the specific point in where the Union Pacific and Central Pacific tracks finally met in 1869 to connect the nation.
Promontory Point, Utah
Aimed at destroying traditional tribal structures, this 1887 federal policy attempted to force Native Americans to adopt white cultural customs and lifestyles
Dawes Act
Everyday citizens who took the law into their own hands
Vigilantes
The 1862 law granting 160 acres of free Western land to any citizen willing to farm it for 5 years.
Homestead Act
This immigrant group made up the vast majority of the dangerous, back-breaking labor force for the Central Pacific railroad.
Chinese immigrants
This federal agency, established within the Department of the Interior
Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA)
This Colorado mountain peak became the site of a major gold rush in 1859, causing thousands of miners to paint its name on their wagons.
Pikes Peak
This was the derogatory nickname given to Great Plains farmers who had to break through thick, root-tangled prairie grass to plant crops.
Sodbusters
This 1862 act gave railroad companies millions of acres of public land and government bonds for every mile of track they laid.
Pacific Railway Act
This Nez Perce leader famously led his people
Chief Joseph